IN McKeesport Area Summer 2020 | Page 8

Frontline Foods Fuels the Fight Against COVID-19 Frontline Foods delivers meals from local restaurants to our health care heroes. BY JENNIFER BROZAK While health care workers are caring for patients on the front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic, one community organization wants to make sure that hospital employees are being cared for, too—all while supporting local restaurants that have been impacted by state shelter-in-place measures. In Pittsburgh and in cities throughout the country, this call is being answered by Frontline Foods, a national organization dedicated to supporting health care workers at local hospitals by partnering with local restaurants. In this region, the effort is being championed by Anne Kelly, the city lead for Frontline’s Pittsburgh chapter. A California native and a producer of large-scale events for corporate clients, Kelly moved to Pittsburgh in February, just before the pandemic began to spread across the country. With the project that she had been working on—the Tokyo Olympics—postponed, she suddenly found herself with unexpected time on her hands. She reached out to friends back in San Francisco, and learned of an effort to deliver pizza to a pediatric nurse at UCSF. Through donations from the community, the pizza shop could prepare and deliver pizzas to health care workers. “As I was coordinating that for people who were 2,500 miles away, it got me wondering if anyone was organizing something like that in Pittsburgh,” Kelly explains. “At the time, the answer seemed to be no, so I emailed the 11 people I 6 724.942.0940 TO ADVERTISE ❘ icmags.com