Massachusetts has a plan to end hunger, but it’s missing the most important piece

CommonWealth Beacon · David Blais · September 9, 2026

Chelsea residents wait in line in April, 2020 at a pop-up food pantry run by La Colaborativa distributing provisions amid the pandemic. (Photo by Michael Jonas)

" data-large-file="https://i0.wp.com/commonwealthbeacon.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/chelsea-food-line.jpg?fit=780%2C520&ssl=1" /> EARLIER THIS YEAR , Governor Healey’s Anti-Hunger Task Force released its final report. I read it closely. Much of it is right, fortunately, since 40 percent of households in Massachusetts are currently experiencing food insecurity.

But buried inside, in a section called “Coordinating Cross-Sector Collaboration,” is a three-word phrase that deserves far more than a bullet point: enhance data sharing . The task force knows this matters. What the report doesn’t explain is why it keeps failing — or what would actually make it work.

I know, because I have watched it fail before.

In 2022, I sat in a room in Washington with food bank leaders from across the country. The Biden administration had convened a hunger summit. The plans were ambitious and the energy was high. When I raised the question of what was actually happening at the level of individual food pantries — the duplication, the gaps, the invisibility — the conversation moved on quickly.

Those leaders had a goal of ending hunger by 2030.

How’s that going?

Around the same time, I proposed legislation here in Massachusetts requiring organizations that receive state anti-hunger grants to participate in a shared data system. The bill was filed. Then quietly buried. In 2023, state Rep. Priscila Sousa of Framingham filed a version of the same idea — H.219 — aimed at reducing duplication and increasing collaboration among food organizations. Same result.

Now the Governor’s Task Force has arrived at the same conclusion: better data, better coordination, less duplication. I keep asking myself why the same right answer keeps producing the same outcome.

Here is what I think is actually going on. Every plan I have seen — from Washington to Beacon Hill — is designed from the top down . Governors, food banks, large nonprofits, state agencies craft the framework and assume the system below will fall into line. But there are more than 900 food pantries across Massachusetts. They operate independently, serve their communities with genuine dedication, and share almost no information with each other or with anyone above them. No task force report reaches them. No state dashboard changes their daily reality.

Change in this system will only happen from the bottom up. Or it doesn’t come at all.

At Daniel’s Table in Framingham, we saw something this summer that made this concrete. In the span of 14 days, our client profile shifted from roughly 10 immigrant families for every English-speaking family to 12 of 13 new requests coming from English-speaking working families. People with jobs, who own cars and homes. People who never saw this coming.

Without a shared system, that signal lives and dies at one organization. No food bank sees it. No state agency sees it. And if we can’t see it together, we can’t respond to it together.

The task force recommends a public data dashboard on nutrition program participation. Fine. But a dashboard showing aggregate numbers is not the same as a connected system that lets organizations see what they are collectively witnessing — and actually do something about it.

What Massachusetts needs is not complicated, even if it’s not easy: Make data sharing a condition of receiving state anti-hunger grants. Not optional or even aspirational. Required. Rep. Sousa’s bill pointed in exactly this direction. It should be revived, strengthened, and passed as part of implementing these recommendations.

The emergency food system in Massachusetts is full of extraordinary people doing hard work. What it lacks is connective tissue — the infrastructure that turns 900 separate efforts into something that actually functions as a whole.

The task force has handed the Legislature a roadmap. Someone has to decide to drive.

David Blais is the founder of Daniel’s Table, a Framingham-based food pantry.

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