Have you ever considered the hidden costs of an unexpected hospitalization? At Johns Hopkins Children’s Center, as at other pediatric centers, the costs of parking ($15 per day), meals (three guest trays each day total $17) and a cup of coffee ($5 per day) add up fast. The weekly tally: $265 — just for one parent. And this doesn’t account for lost wages and day care for other children at home.

So, how have we been trying to help? In 2018, the patient and family-centered care team at the Children’s Center started a weekly family dinner program in the Family Resource Library in The Charlotte R. Bloomberg Children’s Center building.  The program provides a free, hot meal once each week for inpatient families. During COVID-19, the program switched to prepackaged, grab-and-go lunches delivered once per week to family kitchens on the inpatient units. Weekly meals in the library resumed in October 2022 and our families have greatly appreciated them.

We also launched our first food pantry in March 2020, which is based on the University of Chicago’s Feed1st model. We now operate three food pantry shelves in the Children’s Center: in the pediatric intensive care unit, the inpatient oncology unit and the family library. A food pantry in the David M. Rubenstein Child Health Building is for families in the specialty clinics.

The food pantries are stocked weekly with snacks, cereal, milk, and canned goods such as soups and fruit (including kosher items thanks to our partnerships with Chai Lifeline and Bikur Cholim). Since 2020, well over 5,000 items from the inpatient shelves and nearly 130,000 pounds of food from the outpatient pantry have been distributed.

For families stuck in the pediatric emergency room, we started and keep stocked a comfort cart with such things as drinks, snacks, toiletry bags, notebooks and coloring books. Volunteers take the cart into the family waiting room and staff members grab items to offer to patients and families in exam rooms.

The temporary closing of the Cobblestone Cafe in fall 2022 brought sudden changes regarding how and where patients and family and staff members can buy food. We have been working closely with our clinical customer service coordinators to ensure that patients and families know what food is available and where to find it. We created a handout that is posted in every family kitchen and can be placed in admission folders.

As I write this, we are three years past those early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, and things finally feel like they are back to normal. The time is right to look to the future and find other ways we can help support our families through the hospital experience.