We know that hunger is a global issue, not only in times of disaster, but all the time. What can be and often is overlooked, however, is the subtle but widespread domestic hunger that exists all around us - in the U.S., in Kansas, in our cities and towns, and in rural areas. This issue of Nutrition Spotlight takes a look at food insecurity and hunger in Kansas, some of the work being done to eradicate it, and how we can help.
Each year, approximately one in ten Kansas households (about 105,000 households) is food insecure. Households classified as "food insecure" were at some time during the year uncertain of having, or unable to acquire, enough food to meet the basic needs of all their members, because of lack of money or other resources. Families that experience food insecurity often deal with it on a recurring basis, not just one or two times a year. Research has shown household food insecurity to be associated with increased levels of anxiety and chronic health conditions among adults, as well as anxiety, depression and behavioral problems among school-age children.
Hunger is the uneasy or painful sensation caused by a
lack of food, due to a lack of money or resources. In almost
38,000 homes in Kansas, at least one member suffered from hunger
and
in nearly 4,000 of these homes, children skipped meals or
went hungry because the family did not have enough food.
Job loss, gaining a household member or loss of food stamp benefits places stress on the budget and food insecurity is often experienced. More than 58% of food insecure households in Kansas had a least one full-time worker in the family. Households with single mothers raising children and racial and ethnic minority individuals are at increased risk for food security as indicated in the graphic.
The Food Stamp Program is the largest food assistance program in the United States but does not serve all low-income, food-insecure or hungry households for a variety of reasons including social stigma, the application process or the inconvenience of office hours or location. The School Lunch Program and the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC) are the other two major federally funded nutrition support programs. Many of the households that experienced food insecurity did not obtain assistance from the nutrition safety-net programs that might have eased their situation. Reducing poverty seems to be the surest way to reduce hunger and food insecurity in Kansas.
For more detailed information and community resources, see the full report Hunger in the Heartland: Hunger and Food Insecurity Among Kansans, 1995-2000 on the Kansas Health Institute Web site, www.khi.org . KW
"Hunger is not a place over there..." Frances Moore Lappé, at World Food Day Program, 2005
Coordinating and serving as co-principal investigator for the Kansas Food Stamp Nutrition Education (FSNE) Plan has been Karen Hudson's main responsibility for the past ten years. Hudson joined the Department of Human Nutrition in 1996.
In Kansas, the plan is known as the Family Nutrition Program, or FNP. K-State Research and Extension (KSRE) administers and implements it. Approximately 600 people help provide the program statewide.
Each year, FNP helps tens of thousands of Kansans on limited budgets learn about healthy eating and physical activity. KSRE county Family and Consumer Sciences (FCS) agents and their assistants provide most of the nutrition education.
"I enjoy the many facets of my job, and the diversity of tasks," Hudson states. "And I know that all of the behind-the-scenes paperwork I do to coordinate FNP allows many Kansans to eat more healthfully and to live better. We have many success stories with FNP."
FNP currently is a $5 million reimbursement program at work in more than 80 counties across Kansas. It is funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) through a contract with the Kansas Department of Social and Rehabilitation Services.
As FNP Coordinator, Hudson collaborates with representatives from state agencies. She also works on many multi-state committees to promote program evaluation and to help plan meetings. For past eight years, Hudson has edited the annual FNSE report for the 10-state Mountain Plains region.
Hudson's talents are also recognized nationally. She was recently selected to serve on the FSNE Program Development Team to help national policy-making staff better understand different needs of state programs, and on a USDA Educational and Administrative Reporting System workgroup. Her teams' efforts will result in better communication about FSNE to legislators and other stakeholders, and decisions that make FSNE more effective for clientele.
In 2001, Hudson helped establish the ongoing
one-credit course HN530, Nutrition Education in
Extension. After completing the course,
qualified students, under the direction of county FCS agents,
provide nutrition education directly to FNP clientele during the summer.
While at K-State, Hudson has authored Feeding Our Youngest, a curriculum for parents and caregivers of infants and toddlers. She is a regular contributor to K-State's Nutrition Spotlight newsletter.
Before assuming her current position, Hudson was a dietitian for the Fort Riley Intervention Project. The Office of the Surgeon General sponsored this research project to promote the health of soldiers and their spouses. She and other health professionals offered disease-prevention services to help lower medical care costs.
Hudson previously worked as director of dietetics and food service at Wharton Manor, a long-term care facility in Manhattan, Kansas.
Hudson is a lifelong learner, with developing interests in photography and gardening. She became a registered dietitian 12 years ago after studying dietetics at both the University of Wisconsin, Madison and Kansas State University while raising her daughter.
An Arkansas native, Hudson grew up in Fayetteville. She began her professional life with a B.A. in history and M.Ed. in counseling from the University of Arkansas. She taught at the high school level and has served as Director of Housing at Pace University in New York City.
Hudson has bicycled and walked through many Europe countries, and has traveled in Guatemala, Puerto Rico, Mexico and Canada. Additionally, she has lived in Kentucky, California, Texas and Indiana.
Improving financial resources to buy nourishing foods in adequate amounts is an important element in helping older adults maintain their health and independence.
Program participants were five times more likely to feel positive than negative about being in the KFAP. None of the seniors in the program who were interviewed during the project could think of any disadvantages to using it.
The dollar-value increase to the north central Kansas economy due to the project's success was just over $110,000 in 2003.
Overall, because older adult households participate in KFAP, north central Kansas economies experience a gain of about $99,000 each month. Annually, this amounts to more than a million dollars in economic activity in local towns. This strengthens neighborhoods, assists small businesses and spurs local economic development. The food program also serves as a stable source of demand for products from Kansas farmers and food industries.
As of July 2000, national participation in the Food Stamp Program (FSP) had declined. Only about 30% of eligible Americans ages 60 years and older participated. Many senior adults on limited incomes do not have adequate food resources and are vulnerable to food insecurity and its associated problems.
The project built partnerships that helped community agencies reach an underserved population of older adults. Innovative outreach products heightened awareness of the program among older adults and linked nutrition and health messages with promotion of the KFAP. The public outreach campaign delivered messages more than one million times throughout the intervention region.
K-State Research and Extension, the North Central-Flint Hills Area Agency on Aging and Kansas Social and Rehabilitation Services collaborated on the effort, which was funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture Food and Nutrition Service. (MH)
Food security is defined by USDA as "access at all times to enough food for an active, healthy life." At KNN, we think food security is more than that. It also means that food is acquired in socially acceptable ways. You and I don't get our food at emergency food pantries or soup kitchens, so to be truly food secure, everyone will have enough "healthy" food that is acquired from grocery stores, farmers' markets, Heartland SHARE food boxes, school meals, and other sources that everyone may use to get food.
We know that sometimes people must rely on emergency food, so the first level of food security is assuring that sufficient emergency food resources will be available. This includes food pantries, soup kitchens and commodity foods. KNN is working with TEFAP to help provide nutrition education resources to accompany that food. (See related article on page 5.) This is a vitally important area, as everyone who needs emergency food should be able to get it to help alleviate hunger, and there will always be job losses, catastrophic illnesses, and other events that lead to people being in need of emergency food.
The next level is non-emergency food resources: the Food Assistance Program (formerly called Food Stamps), WIC, school meals, the summer feeding program, CACFP, and Heartland SHARE. All of these agencies are KNN partners, and we all strive to work together to promote each other's programs. Some of these programs are specifically for low income families (WIC, the summer feeding program). Others are for everyone.
• We typically don't think of school lunch as a program for "poor people," but somehow school breakfast has been stigmatized that way. We'd like to see school breakfasts more widely used in Kansas so that it becomes socially acceptable for all children free, reduced and paid to enjoy breakfast at school.
• Heartland SHARE (www.heartlanshare.com) offers a monthly food box containing fresh fruits and vegetables, 5-6 frozen meat items, and a few grocery items at approximately one-half retail cost. There are no income guidelines for SHARE. If you eat, you qualify! KNN is assisting in the development of a SHARE brochure in both English and Spanish that will be distributed in low income communities to especially encourage people with limited resources to help stretch their budgets by purchasing a SHARE.
• KNN recently collaborated with local community groups to conduct food assistance promotion campaigns with great success. One of the keys to the promotion was a very simple concept: people told us that they received information about nutrition from displays in WIC offices. So we put displays about the food assistance program in WIC offices!
• KNN is working with the Campaign to End Childhood Hunger and the Kansas Association of Community Action Programs to help develop a combined application process so people can more easily apply for food assistance, school meals, etc., without having to enter the same information a dozen different times. Potential food assistance applicants told us that they perceived their child's Head Start teacher and the staff at food pantries as "friendlier" than the staff at the Food Assistance offices. As a result, a key feature of this project is that volunteers and staff at service agencies from which people may already be receiving assistance will help with the application process.
Far too many people in Kansas experience food insecurity and hunger. This is a rural and an urban problem; it impacts families with young children, middle-aged people, and the elderly. It takes government and private resources to assure that no one is hungry or food insecure in Kansas, from private charity food pantries and soup kitchens, to federally funded school meals and food assistance. For long-term solutions to assure food security, it also means job training, child care assistance, affordable housing, livable wages, and all the other issues that impact poverty. World Hunger Year has produced a wonderful document that provides communities some ideas on addressing hunger and food security, and it is summerized beginning on page 5. (KF)
The Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP) provides food to low income households. This food can include a variety of items— canned vegetables and fruits, dried fruits, canned meats, peanut butter, spaghetti saucejust to list a few!
Several times a year, this food is shipped to communities. Persons who qualify for TEFAP can pick up food at local distribution sites. The SRS web site (www.srskansas.org/ISD/ees/TEFAP.htm) outlines the TEFAP qualifications. This web site also includes the local TEFAP contact persons, who can offer more details on how to sign up for TEFAP, plus the time and location of the next food shipment for that area.
At the Kansas Nutrition Network, we are working with Ron Hamilton and Lori Allen, both with the SRS Food Distribution Unit, to offer more information on the commodity foods available through The Emergency Food Assistance Program. Currently, this includes providing emails with shipment information specific to certain areas/counties, including the month of shipment and foods that may be available in that shipment. We hope to expand this offering to highlight recipes from Kids A Cookin' and the Month of Menus that might feature commodity foods available in the current shipment.
The USDA web site provides nutrition information, some tips on how to use the commodity foods, plus some recipe possibilities for the commodity foods
http://www.fns.usda.gov/fdd/facts/commodityfacts.htm
We know that many FCS agents already work closely with their local TEFAP distributors to demonstrate use of commodity foods and to offer recipes. We would appreciate any suggestions on "what has worked for us" and "what would be helpful to us." Send your thoughts to Barbara Roths, Kansas Nutrition Network, broths@ksu.edu. (BR)
Kansas communities can implement the following strategies to reduce hunger:
There are many federal and state agencies working to ensure food security for Kansans living in poverty. To maximize the likelihood that optimal food assistance is available to low income individuals and families, Governor Kathleen Sebelius created a state level Hunger Reduction Team to coordinate efforts of the eight federal/state food assistance programs. The team is comprised of representatives of the following agencies:
SRS: Food Assistance (formerly know as Food Stamps), Soup Kitchen Program, and Emergency Food Assistance (TEFAP);
Aging: Elderly Nutrition Programs (Congregate & Home Delivered Meals and Senior Farmers' Market Nutrition Programs);
Health and Environment: Women, Infants and Children (WIC) and Commodity Supplemental Food Program (CSFP);
Education: Child Nutrition Programs in schools and childcare facilities, as well as Juvenile Justice Authority and Corrections
The team's primary goal was to develop a means for people
to access additional types of food assistance, thus enhancing
the likelihood of food security. For example, if a family is
receiving Food Assistance (Food Stamps); then the school-aged children in
the family are eligible for free school meals. To publicize the options,
the team developed and printed a brochure, "Your Guide to
Food Resources," highlighting information on the
state/federal food assistance programs offered in Kansas. Each member agency
will
distribute the brochure to its clientele. It may be viewed
and downloaded from the following websites:
http://www.srskansas.org/ISD/ees/food_main.htm-English
http://www.srskansas.org/ISD/ees/espanol/eeshome_espanol.htm -Spanish. It will eventually be on each of the agencies' websites in English and Spanish. The brochure provides a short summary of what is available, who is eligible to receive food assistance and how to apply.
In addition, the Hunger Reduction Team:
These are but a few of the team's initiatives. It will continue to foster interagency networking, collaboration and policy coordination.
Kansas communities can:
Questions or concerns about this publication? Contact Shelly Burklund, 207 Justin Hall, Manhattan, KS 66506, Phone: (785) 532-1670, FAX: (785) 532-1678