This report summarizes findings from year 4 of an ongoing evaluation of Meals-to-You (MTY), a pilot program administered by the Baylor Collaborative on Hunger and Poverty (BCHP) and funded by the US Department of Agriculture (USDA). The MTY program is designed to deliver shelf-stable boxes of food to children in rural and remote communities during the summer, with the aim of addressing the increased risk of children’s food insecurity during the summer, specifically for those who lack access to summer meal sites. The MTY pilot was originally meant to last for three years and expire in summer 2021, but USDA extended the program to a fourth summer. This report covers the 2022 summer MTY program in Alaska, New Mexico, Texas, and Utah.

The Urban Institute is the independent program evaluator of the program and was contracted by BCHP to conduct an evaluation of MTY. We developed insights through a mixed-methods approach to data collection involving surveys, state-level advisory groups with school districts and participating households, interviews with vendors, and site visits in four school districts in Alaska, New Mexico, and Texas. We found the following:

• The summer MTY program served 3,510 households and 7,870 participants in Alaska, New Mexico, Texas, and Utah. The program successfully delivered 466,800 meals.
• The program was impacted by a delay in contract approval from USDA, which affected all aspects of program planning and execution and ultimately limited the number of school districts and families that were able to enroll.
• Overall, we found that household food insecurity declined from the beginning of the program to the end (64.8 to 57.8 percent), except for Alaska Native households, where food insecurity stayed the same. Receiving more MTY meals was associated with lower rates of very low food security, which is the most severe form of hardship.
• Site visits to rural school districts highlighted substantial differences in postal service, shipping, last-mile delivery capabilities, retail food access, summer meal availability, walkability and transportation infrastructure, and internet and technology access.

This report contains several recommendations based on insights from parents and school districts that highlight increasing stakeholder engagement through advisory groups, decreasing barriers to enrollment, and ensuring future programming is funded well in advance of initiation.