WORCESTER, Mass. - Local political and community leaders joined the Worcester County Food Bank Friday to announce the first ever Worcester Community Food Assessment.

The goal is to gain insight from locals about the experience of accessing food in supermarkets through federal programs and from local food pantries. The assessment will help generate more ideas and solutions about fighting food insecurity in central Massachusetts.

"The purpose of today is to let folks know that we're doing this community food assessment and to engage them in participating,” said Jean McMurray, the food bank’s CEO. “We want them to help us identify people with lived experience that we can meet with. This is a broad community effort and it's going to take all of us doing our part.

“And we also can't food bank and food pantry our way out of this crisis. We really need the federal government, the state government, local organizations to come together and figure this out once and for all, because we're just not able to keep up with the tremendous need and it just keeps growing and growing."

Leaders at the food bank said at Friday’s event that food insecurity in the area is currently the worst it has ever been.