In 2020, the Walmart Foundation awarded grants to 11 community-based projects offering innovative approaches to supporting healthy food access. The grants focused on initiatives that improve access to fresh foods for regions and populations experiencing disproportionately high rates of food insecurity. The University of Florida, one of the 11 grantees, developed meal kits to better address food insecurity among low-income and food-insecure families in four communities across three Florida counties.

Key features of the initiative included using community-engaged methods to incorporate the community's voice into the design of the meal kit program and creating meal kits with cooking utensils and recipes that allowed participants to try new foods and learn cooking skills. We found that the utensils and recipes, which typically don't come with traditional charitable food meals, was reported to help participants learn cooking skills to prepare a healthy meal.