Baby formula shortage: ‘It’s extremely hard to find it:’ Worcester coalition raises $70K to help residents during shortage, but formula is still scarce

Originally Appeared in MassLive
By Kiernan Dunlop

June 28, 2022

Mari Gonzalez went to seven different stores to get 17 cans of baby formula on Friday.

“It’s like hunting just trying to find more and more formula,” Gonzalez said.

Gonzalez, the executive director of El Buen Samaritano Food Program in Worcester, said she’s become an expert on baby formula since the U.S. began experiencing a shortage in recent months.

Gonzalez is part of a coalition in Worcester, the Baby Formula Equity and Acquisition Fund, which is working to ensure that every family in Worcester has access to baby formula.

In addition to Gonzalez’s organization, the United Way of Central Massachusetts, Edward Street Child Services, Pernet Family Health Services and Catholic Charities are all part of the coalition that has worked together to raise over $70,000 to acquire baby formula, according to United Way of Central Massachusetts President and CEO Tim Garvin.

“The issue is we’re not able to find a distributor that we could use those dollars on and bring formula into the community,” Garvin said.

Aside from searching different stores around Central Massachusetts like Gonzalez, the coalition has partnered with groups like Neighborhood Villages in Boston which managed to get 700 pounds of baby formula into Boston.

Neighborhood Villages put them in touch with a potential distributor, Garvin said, and the coalition is waiting to hear if the distributor can handle a $50,000 order of formula.

Garvin said he’s “cautiously hopeful” that the city will be seeing a number of trucks filled with formula coming into the city in the next few weeks, due to the coalition and those in the Worcester community that helped create it.

The shortage started when Abbott, the country’s largest producer of baby formula, had to recall powdered infant baby formula after the Food and Drug Administration found a bacteria that can cause severe food born illness in children.

The recall, along with supply chain issues caused by the pandemic, led to more than 40% percent of baby formula in the county going out of stock at the beginning of May.

That month Gonzalez’s food pantry received an anonymous donation of baby formula, which she announced on the pantry’s Facebook page. Since posting on May 23, Gonzalez said 127 families have reached out to her about getting formula.

Parents have told Gonzalez they’ve taken off work to find formula. A grandmother told Gonzalez she needed formula because her daughter was put into a medically induced coma due to complications from COVID-19 after giving birth to twins.

Gonzalez said the grandmother was in tears after she gave her six cans of formula and some diapers.

Finding formula for babies also can be complicated because babies are used to their brand of formulas, and switching their formula can cause problems with digestion and fussiness, according to Sheilah Dooley the executive director of Pernet.

“With the shortage families are scared and looking around for whatever they can,” Dooley said.

People’s panic has led them to hoard formula and sometimes dilute it to make it last longer.

Formula shouldn’t be diluted, according to Dooley, because it means babies aren’t receiving all the nutrients they need.

People that have never come to a food pantry before are coming to Pernet, Dooley said, because they started to carry infant formula.

Pernet was lucky. Dooley said it had “quite a stockpile” of formula before the shortage started.

Now that stockpile is really dwindling down, she said Monday.

“We want to make sure (the shortage) stays at the top of people’s minds so that we get baby formula and so it doesn’t happen again,” Dooley said.

Families that can afford it can drive to different stores and even different states to find formula. But there are families in Worcester that can’t do that, they can’t afford transportation and because of that they’re the ones impacted the most.

“It’s extremely hard to find it,” Gonzalez said of formula in the city.

“This is why we’re hoping there’s a bulk formula (order) coming into the state,” she said.

Families are also facing judgement for not breastfeeding, according to both Dooley and Gonzalez. But, there are many reasons why a person who gives birth may not be able to breastfeed.

People have told Gonzalez they had to wean their children because they needed to go back to work full time.

Gonzalez herself said she sympathizes with the parents because it was extremely hard for her to produce breast milk when she had her two daughters and they both ended up on formula within one week of being born.

“We shouldn’t judge or say ‘Why aren’t you breastfeeding’ because you don’t know people’s situations,” she said.

Gonzalez said she wanted to stress that the baby formula shortage is a national crisis no matter your race or socioeconomic background.

“Everybody is in need,” Gonzalez said.

She said she appreciates the work of the United Way, because “together we’re stronger and it’s all about working together for the community.”

“Worcester itself has such a great safety net. That all these organizations have come together to solve this problem really speaks to the community...and the city of Worcester,” Dooley said.

Garvin said he wants people in the community to realize that the formula shortage is still an issue and that organization in the city are working together to address it.

The shortage of formula creates an equity issue for those that don’t have transportations, are vulnerable or underemployed.

“We want to create formula equity here in Central Massachusetts,” he said.

Gonzalez said anyone in the Worcester area looking for formula can contact her at (508) 304-1501 or info@ebsamaritano.org.