ACTIVE LEARNONG EXCERCISE

Active Learning Excercise Content

PUBLIC HEALTH Millions of American families struggle to get food on the table, report finds OCTOBER 26, 2023

Just putting three meals a day on the table was a struggle for millions of people in the U.S. last year. That’s the sobering conclusion of a new report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which found hunger in the U.S. rose sharply in 2022.

The report found that 44.2 million people lived in households that had difficulty getting enough food to feed everyone in 2022, up from 33.8 million people the year prior. Those families include more than 13 million children experiencing food insecurity, a jump of nearly 45 percent from 2021.

“These numbers are more than statistics. They paint a picture of just how many Americans faced the heartbreaking challenge last year of struggling to meet a basic need for themselves and their children,” U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack said in a statement.

The findings reverse a decade-long decline in hunger and food insecurity in the U.S. And they reflect the loss of several pandemic-era measures designed to strengthen the social safety net, says Elaine Waxman, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute who studies food insecurity and federal nutrition programs.

“A lot of the programs that had buffered people’s experience during the pandemic were retired or rolled back in some way,” Waxman says.

Pandemic food assistance that held back hunger comes to an end. Those programs included an expanded child tax credit that gave families with children extra money, temporarily increased benefits from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP – formerly known as food stamps – and free school meals for every child.

At the same time, food prices and housing costs have shot up, says Kelly Horton, chief program officer at the Food Research and Action Center. And she points out an increasing number of Americans are working in unstable gig-economy jobs, like delivering groceries, driving for ride-share services or completing tasks on demand.

” So all of these things converging…we have a lot of people who are living on the edge,” Horton says.

In its report, the USDA found that nearly 7 million households were so financially squeezed last year that they had to skip meals at times because there wasn’t enough food to go around. Almost all of these households said they couldn’t afford to eat balanced meals. In some 381,000 households with children, kids also experienced the pangs of hunger – skipping meals or going the whole day without eating. Waxman notes this could have significant health consequences, especially for kids.

Source: nokidhungry.org

REQUIREMENTS:

Identify how your community addressed the issue of Food Insecurity many families experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your community is where you currently live.

Write a summary that highlights some of the findings of your research on how your community dealt with food insecurities during the pandemic and initiatives they have implemented POST-pandemic to help those vulnerable populations. What impact can the advanced clinician have on this problem within their community?

Please note the grading rubric.

The submission should be minimally 3 pages not counting the cover page and references.

DUE DATE January 16, 2024

NO PLAGIARISM MORE THAN 10 % ACCEPTED

3-4 SCHOLARLY REFERENCES NO OLDER THAN 5 YEARS