The Dysphagia Food Bank

What is the Dysphagia Food Bank?

The mission of Dysphagia Outreach Project is to provide meaningful assistance to low-income individuals across the lifespan who are affected by feeding and swallowing disorders.

We accomplish this by:

• Collecting and distributing a variety of dysphagia-related supplies to individuals in need,

• Providing education services relating to the appropriate prescription and use of dysphagia supplies, and

• Conducting research to improve the equitable distribution of dysphagia supplies to people in need and improve the autonomy of people with feeding and swallowing disorders.

Since dysphagia affects individuals at any age, our goal is to advocate for support and awareness of issues related to dysphagia across the lifespan. We also aim to improve interdisciplinary team-building and cooperation to ensure that individuals with dysphagia, their family/caregivers, and their care team are all educated regarding evidence-based practice in swallowing and swallowing disorders.

What Should I Know Before I Donate?

• At this time, The Dysphagia Outreach Project is only able to accept new, unopened, and unexpired food and oral care products.

• Reusable items such as bottles, spoons, cups, and other multi-use products must be cleaned and sterilized (per manufacturer guidelines) prior to shipping to us.

• Therapy devices such as EMST150 and The Breather can only be accepted for donation if they are in their original, unopened packaging.

• Open, expired, damaged, or dirty items will be discarded.

• At this time, we are NOT accepting donations of powdered cornstarch-based thickeners. Acceptance of cornstarch-based thickeners will be on a case-by-case basis only.

  • Despite being a popular option for thickening culinary items, cornstarch-based thickening agents are not suitable options for people with dysphagia. Active components in cornstarch-based thickener react differently to foods/liquids with varying temperatures, high pH levels, or even when mixed with saliva, causing significant instability and variability in consistency. On average, people with dysphagia have longer meal times which increases the amount of liquid instability. All of these factors lead to a higher chance of aspiration and increased injury to the lungs compared to xanthan gum thickeners. 

  • Utilizing thickening agents (such as xanthan gum) that do not break down rapidly or impact their hydration is key to effectively managing a safe swallow.

• We ask that you pay for shipping of products to us if possible in order to allow our financial donations to go farther and help more recipients. If you have a large quantity of items to donate or need financial assistance to help with getting us your donation, please email team@dysphagiaoutreach.org.

What Can I Donate?

The following list (though not exhaustive) provides some examples of the types of items we are currently accepting:

Where Do I Send Donations?