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Research Access

327,476 verified food-assistance locations across the US. Open-access, CC BY 4.0 licensed. Documentation, citation guide, and research-collaboration contact below.

Available datasets

HSDS 3.0 Open Referral feed (recommended)

Spec-compliant Human Services Data Specification. Used by 211 systems, Findhelp, Unite Us, academic researchers, and SDOH platforms. Endpoint: /hsds/v3/. Datapackage descriptor: /hsds/v3/datapackage.json.

Tables: organizations, services, locations, service_at_location, phones, addresses, schedules, languages, taxonomy_terms, attributes.

CSV / JSON bulk export

Paginated bulk download. Filter by state and resource type. Endpoint: /api/resources/bulk · params: page=1, limit=1000 (max), format=json|csv, state=<2-letter>, type=<resource_type>.

Includes id, name, organization, address, city, state, zip, lat, lng, phone, website, resource_type, hours_json, data_source, last_verified_date.

State-by-state aggregates

Pre-aggregated counts per state per resource type. Endpoint: /atlas.json (national) · /atlas/<state> (HTML per state).

Useful for cross-state comparison, food-insecurity rate proxies, regression covariates.

Comprehensive snapshot

Single-pull JSON with org identity, totals, top states, top cities, discovery URLs. Endpoint: /snapshot.json.

Useful for paper appendices, methodology footnotes, and reproducibility statements.

License

All Feed America aggregated data is released under Creative Commons BY 4.0. You may use, share, adapt, and build upon the data — including for commercial purposes — provided you attribute Feed America (EIN 92-1761881) and indicate if changes were made.

Source data ingested from federal agencies (USDA FNS, HRSA, NCES) is in the public domain and remains so; nonprofit-partner data carries the originating organization's attribution.

Citation

For peer-reviewed research:

Feed America. (2026-04-29). Feed America Food-Assistance Directory
[Dataset]. 327,476 verified locations.
https://feedam.org/research. License: CC BY 4.0.

For state-specific subsets, append the URL: https://feedam.org/atlas/<state-abbr>.

Methodology

See /data-quality for the full data-quality methodology — verification tiers, freshness gates, deduplication rules, source-trust hierarchy, and update cadence.

Research collaboration

We welcome collaboration with academic researchers studying:

Food insecurity, hunger, and food deserts
SNAP/WIC participation and access
Social determinants of health (SDOH) — food security as a clinical-care input
Geographic disparities in nutrition assistance
Effects of federal program policy changes
Open data quality and verification methodologies

For dataset extracts (custom slices, historical snapshots), bulk API access, or co-authorship inquiries: research@feedam.org (also reachable as partners@feedam.org).

Past + ongoing uses

The dataset is consumed by:

Healthcare SDOH platforms (hospitals embedding the food-finder for discharge planning)
211 networks routing callers to food assistance
Findhelp / Unite Us partner aggregators
Academic researchers via the HSDS feed
Government agencies and Congressional offices for constituent-services

Citation requirements

Per CC BY 4.0:

Attribution: Cite Feed America (EIN 92-1761881)
License notice: Indicate CC BY 4.0
Modification disclosure: If you adapted or filtered the data, note the changes
Link back: Include the URL https://feedam.org/research when feasible

Last updated: 2026-04-29 · 327,476 verified locations · License: CC BY 4.0 · Governance · Methodology · Hunger Atlas · /snapshot.json