Karen Jacobsen and Dan Maxwell recently shared their expertise on cash transfers and food aid with Tufts Now. The article begins:

As the ongoing refugee and migrant crisis continues to dominate international news, it has given new urgency to an age-old question: What is the best way to get desperately needed food to people who have been forced to flee their homeland because of war, natural disaster or persecution?

The traditional method of providing aid has been either distributing sacks of flour or rice off the back of trucks, or handing out packages of oil, pasta, lentils and other foods to families residing in camps.

But the strategies for delivering food aid have not kept up with the times, according to Karen Jacobsen, Henry J. Leir Professor in Global Migration at the Fletcher School. Now Jacobsen, who directs the Refugees and Forced Migration Research Program at Tufts’ Feinstein International Center, is analyzing new methods for serving one of the world’s most vulnerable populations. Click here to read the full article.