The National School Lunch Program is a federally assisted meal program operating in public and nonprofit private schools and residential child care institutions. It provides nutritionally balanced, low-cost or free lunches to children each school day.Jun 13, 2017
A student from a household with an income at or below 130 percent of the poverty income threshold is eligible for free lunch. A student from a household with an income between 130 percent and up to 185 percent of the poverty threshold is eligible for reduced price lunch.Apr 16, 2015
In return, they must serve lunches that meet Federal requirements, and they must offer free or reduced price lunches to eligible children. School food authorities can also be reimbursed for snacks served to children through age 18 in after school educational or enrichment programs.
NATIONAL SCHOOL LUNCH PROGRAM 1. What is the National School Lunch Program? The National School Lunch Program is a federally assisted meal program operating in over 100,000 public and non‐profit private schools and residential child care institutions. It provided nutritionally balanced, low‐cost or free lunches to more than 31 million children each school day in 2012. In 1998, Congress expanded the National School Lunch Program to include reimbursement for snacks served to children in afterschool educational and enrichment programs to include children through 18 years of age. The Food and Nutrition Service administers the program at the Federal level. At the State level, the National School Lunch Program is usually administered by State education agencies, which operate the program through agreements with school food authorities. 2. How does the National School Lunch Program work? Generally, public or nonprofit private schools of high school grade or under and public or nonprofit private residential child care institutions may participate in the school lunch program. School districts and independent schools that choose to take part in the lunch program get cash subsidies and USDA foods from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) for each meal they serve. In return, they must serve lunches that meet Federal requirements, and they must offer free or reduced price lunches to eligible children. School food authorities can also be reimbursed for snacks served to children through age 18 in afterschool educational or enrichment programs. 3. What are the nutritional requirements for school lunches? School lunchs must meet meal pattern and nutrition standards based on the latest Dietary Guidelines for Americans. The current meal pattern increases the availability of fruits, vegetables, and whole grains in the school menu. The meal pattern’s dietary specifications set specific calorie limits to ensure age-appropriate meals for grades K-5, 6-8, and 9-12. Other meal enhancements include gradual reductions in the sodium content of the meals (sodium targets must be reached by SY 2014-15, SY 2017-18 and SY 2022-23). While school lunches must meet Federal meal requirements, decisions about what specific foods to serve and how they are prepared are made by local school food authorities. 4. How do children qualify for free and reduced price meals? Any child at a participating school may purchase a meal through the National School Lunch Program. Children from families with incomes at or below 130 percent of the poverty level are eligible for free meals. Those with incomes between 130 percent and 185 percent of the poverty level are eligible for reduced‐price meals, for which students can be charged no more than 40 cents. (For the period July 1, 2013, through June 30, 2014, 130 percent of the poverty level is $30,615 for a family of four; 185 percent is $43,568 .) Children from families with incomes over 185 percent of poverty pay a full price, though their meals are still subsidized to some extent. Local school food authorities set their own prices for full‐price (paid) meals, but must operate their meal services as non‐profit programs. Afterschool snacks are provided to children on the same income eligibility basis as school meals. However, programs that operate in areas where at least 50 percent of students are eligible for free or reduced‐price meals may serve all their snacks for free. 5. How much reimbursement do schools get? Most of the support USDA provides to schools in the National School Lunch Program comes in the form of a cash reimbursement for each meal served. The current (July 1, 2014 through June 30, 2015) basic cash reimbursement rates if school food authorities served less than 60% free and reduced price lunches during the second preceding school year are: Free lunches: Reduced-price lunches: Paid lunches: $2.93 $2.53 $0.28 Free snacks: Reduced-price snacks: Paid snacks: $0.80 $0.40 $0.07 School food authorities that are certified to be in compliance with the updated meal requirements will receive an additional six cents of federal cash reimbursement for each meal served. This bonus will be adjusted for inflation in subsequent years. These above rates exclude the additional six cents. Higher reimbursement rates are also in effect for Alaska and Hawaii, and for schools with high percentages of low‐income students. For the latest reimbursement rates visit FNS website at http://www.fns.usda.gov/school-meals/rates-reimbursement
We are so grateful for our grant award from the Community First Foundation this month.Jefferson County was our starting point as we began to serve the community with passion, vision and hard work.
“Our journey began in Jefferson County. In 1975, we were founded as the Lutheran Medical Center Foundation and initially served as the fundraising arm for the hospital on Denver’s west side. Over the years, we have grown and changed to become the community foundation we are today. For example, in 1997, we became a community foundation and transformed into LMC Community Foundation. In 2007, we changed our name to Community First Foundation to reflect our broader mission. “
This money will directly impact our ability to expand our capacity. We currently serve eight schools which are Title One. Our program provides weekly a bag of about seven items to Emory Elementary Lakewood, Lasley Elementary Lakewood, Edgewater Elementary, Mulholm Elementary Lakewood, Foothills Elementary Lakewood, Everitt Middle School Wheat Ridge and Brady High School Lakewood.
We receive our food mainly from our programs with Food Bank of the Rockies. We provide shelf stable healthy foods and produce and other food items. Our program is 100 per cent about weekend food for those who are at risk for hunger on weekends.
Our program supports children all year round including summer time. We have a vision and strategy to expand to fill needs of more schools in our specific and targeted geographic areas of Lakewood, Arvada, Wheat Ridge, and Edgewater. We started our program because these geographic areas were not being served with a backpack weekend food program.
We have gotten strong feed back from parents that they want more fresh produce and we shall meet that goal.
We are pleased to announce that during 2017 Jeffco Eats has brought over 50,199 pounds of food to our program schools and the precious children. We have also brought fresh produce and fresh vegetables from a few farms . We love to serve and cannot wait to see what 2018 brings. We will grow together as we believe people want to help others.
Love to have you get involved with us wherever in the world you are. We are missionaries of sorts and serve children with backgrounds from all over the planet.
by guest blogger Pam Peeke, MD, MPH, FACP, FACSM, best-selling author and expert on health, fitness, and nutrition
For years I’ve listened to women and men recount an agonizing spectrum of verbal, emotional, and physical abuse and trauma that occurred during their childhood, often continuing through adolescence. Most remember that period in their life as the time when they began to overeat.
Neglect, abandonment, isolation, and physical harm usually send young people on a desperate search for a way to numb and soothe their pain. Of course, food is the main accessible and primal reward. Laurie has her “Cheerios moments”—a habit of bingeing on cereal in the face of anxiety and stress—just as she did when her addict mother would play a twisted game of “Let’s pretend you’re adopted and not a member of this family.” Alice remembers her father adamantly declaring, “No one loves a fat woman.” She was 10, and believing that statement sent her into a panic, with years of fridge raids and bingeing and, eventually, bariatric surgery as an adult. Then there’s Erica, whose As in school were never good enough for her dad, who insisted on A-pluses. Emily endured years of physical and sexual abuse, resulting in constant self-soothing with food and an extra 100 pounds born of her pain.
I call them painful pounds.
The good news is that there is now evidence-based science to explain the connection between the trauma of childhood abuse and weight gain. And it’s beginning to revolutionize how we approach nutrition and weight management.
If you are one of the countless people who continue to repeat endless cycles of every imaginable diet and exercise craze to shed those extra pounds to no avail, early-life abuse and trauma might be a factor you should consider. Mounting scientific evidence is now linking early-life abuse and stress with eating behaviors that can lead to overweight and obesity and disordered eating. Childhood abuse of any kind often leads to self-soothing with foods that can counteract the pain of ongoing emotional and physical abuse. It’s not surprising that overeating hyper-palatable (sugary, fatty, salty) food combinations creates a long-term psychobiological habit of seeking out these products in the face of life’s stresses.
Recently, Harvard researchers studied 57,321 women enrolled in the long-term Nurses’ Health Study II (NHSII), specifically examining the association between child abuse victimization and food addiction, a form of stress-related overeating. They used the Yale Food Addiction Scale to assess the presence of addictive eating patterns. Their findings were striking: Both severe physical and sexual abuse were associated with a stunning 90 percent increase in food addiction risk. Women with food addiction were 6 units of BMI heavier than women without food addiction. The researchers concluded that, “A history of child abuse is strongly associated with food addiction in this population.”
In a follow-up study, the researchers examined the relationship between post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and food addiction. Noting that PTSD appears to increase obesity risk, they once again surveyed the NHSII population, this time studying how food addiction could be related to the age of trauma onset as well as the type of trauma.
Once again, the scientists uncovered extraordinary links, revealing that approximately 80 percent of the study group had been exposed to some kind of trauma, with 66 percent noting at least one lifetime PTSD symptom. As the number of PTSD symptoms increased, so did the prevalence of food addiction. The women who had noted the highest levels of PTSD had more than twice the incidence of food addiction as the women with no PTSD symptoms or trauma history. This study informed health professionals that it is critical to assess past history of any trauma, stress, or abuse in order to individualize treatment plans that directly address how to manage trauma-based behavior.
You may be wondering about your own unique history. First, examine your eating behavior by answering the following two questions:
If I consume a particular food/beverage, do I feel a loss of control?
If I consume a particular food/beverage, do I feel shame, blame, or guilt?
Typically, people with addictive binge-eating behavior will answer yes to both questions. If this is the case for you, then the next step is to examine whether abuse and trauma may have played a role in the development of any painful pounds. A simple way to assess this is to take the adverse childhood experience (ACE) assessment and then correlate your score with health consequences. The ACE test was created Vincent J. Felliti, MD, founder of the California Institutes of Preventive Medicine, as a tool to assess the prevalence of abuse and neglect in a population of 17,000 adult Kaiser Permanente Medical Care Program members. Felliti and his team found that almost two-thirds of study participants reported at least one ACE, and more than one in five reported three or more ACEs. As the number of ACEs increased, so also did the risk for an extensive laundry list of conditions, including substance abuse, depression, suicide, domestic violence, poor academic performance, and obesity.Please keep in mind that you don’t need to have experienced severe childhood abuse to become an adult who self-soothes with food. There’s a wide spectrum of childhood abuse and trauma. Each child or adolescent perceives life events uniquely, and what is traumatic to one might be something another easily manages. The key is to know your own story and, in knowing it, enable yourself to customize a strategy to switch out self-destructive habits for health-promoting behaviors.
Here are some first steps to guide you as you begin your own healing journey.
Therapy. If you’ve never confronted your past history, it’s advisable to get help in doing that. If you seek out a therapist who specializes in abuse and trauma, he or she can provide homework and immediate practical tools you can use. The key tenets of trauma and abuse-based therapy are to help clients reframe what happened to them and, thus, better manage issues related to trust, safety, and trauma processing—then the person, armed with that knowledge, re-integrates into a healthy and productive life.
Trauma and food-addiction resources. Here are a few reading and organization resources you might find helpful:
Yoga teacher Ana Forrest is the founder of Forrest Yoga and the author of Fierce Medicine: Breakthrough Practices to Heal the Body and Ignite the Spirit, (also available as an audio book, which she narrates). A child abuse and trauma survivor, she found healing in her yoga practice, eventually creating a unique trauma-healing-focused yoga that is now used worldwide.
Christine Courtois, PhD, ABPP, is a preeminent scholar in trauma science and therapy. Her seminal scholarly text is Treatment of Complex Trauma: A Sequenced, Relationship-Based Approach. She recently wrote It”s Not You, It’s What Happened to You for a more general audience; in it, she outlines practical steps for reframing the past and beginning the healing process.
Becoming aware of the abuse-weight connection is key to beginning your own healing journey. Taking action requires courage, self-compassion, and support. In his poem “Invictus,” the poet William Ernest Henley declared that each of us has an “unconquerable soul.” The poem ends with the line “I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul.”
Believe those words and let the healing begin.
Pamela M. Peeke, MD, MPH, FACP, FACSM, is an internationally renowned expert in integrative and preventive medicine. Dr. Peeke is a Pew Foundation Scholar in nutrition and metabolism, assistant professor of medicine at the University of Maryland, and a fellow of the American College of Physicians and American College of Sports Medicine. A nutrition and fitness pioneer, she has been the recipient of numerous fitness-industry lifetime achievement awards, including the IDEA Health and Fitness Association Inspiration Award and the Zumba Fitness International Role Model Award. Known as “the doc who walks the talk,” Dr. Peeke is a Senior Olympic triathlete and a member of the National Senior Games Foundation Board. As senior advisor to the 18th Surgeon General of the U.S., Regina Benjamin, MD, MBA, Dr. Peeke created the Surgeon General’s Walks for a Healthy and Fit Nation program. Dr. Peeke’s work includes WebMD’s lifestyle expert, Discovery Health TV’s chief correspondent for nutrition and fitness, host of both Discovery Health TV’s series Could You Survive? and National Body Challenge, acclaimed TEDx presenter, and regular commentator for the national networks. Dr. Peeke is a New York Times best-selling author; her books include Fight Fat after Forty, Body for Life for Women, and The Hunger Fix.
Traumatic experiences in childhood are predictive of food insecurity for adults, researchers at the Drexel University School of Public Health report in a Jan. 22 study in Public Health Nutrition. Conducted by the school’s Center for Hunger-Free Communities, the study examined 31 mothers of children under age 4, and was published as “The Relationship Between Childhood Adversity and Food Insecurity.” In addition to Drexel’s Mariana Chilton, Molly Knowles and Kimberly Arnold, the research team included Jenny Rabinowich of Liberian-American charity Last Mile Health.
Knowles, the qualitative research coordinator at the Center for Hunger-Free Communities, said in an online interview that the idea was inspired by a previous study. The findings of “Witnesses to Hunger” showed that “families experiencing food insecurity were also often dealing with issues of trauma and exposure to violence,” she said. Around the time the study was being conducted, the Center for Hunger-Free Communities was also learning more about Adverse Childhood Experiences.
In the field of public health, ACEs can be defined as “stressful experiences before the age of 18 that include: emotional and physical abuse; emotional and physical neglect; and household instability, including parental separation, domestic violence, and mental illness, substance abuse, or incarceration of a household member,” according to the research brief associated with the study. The brief also stated that “ACEs are associated with poor adult mental and physical health and economic outcomes.” The study was meant to examine and investigate the relationship between ACEs and food security in households.
Participants in the study were first quantitatively surveyed and given an ACE “score” from 0 to 10, which reflected the participant’s cumulative number of adverse or traumatic childhood experiences. Jocelyn, 20-year-old mother of one, scored 9 on her ACEs test. Jocelyn’s traumatic childhood experiences include her parents’ drug abuse and physical fighting, her parents’ separation, her experience of being raped by her stepbrother, being diagnosed with depression and the following hospitalization, school enrollment changes, and finally, young motherhood and moving back in with her abusive mother.
The interview portion of the study was used to help the researchers define the ways in which ACEs and traumatic childhood events had serious and lasting impacts on caregivers and their relationships with their own children. Emotional and physical abuse and neglect as well as drug or substance abuse that could lead to either of those factors was key in defining relationships that appear to exist between ACEs and adult food insecurity.
Jocelyn described instances of having little to no food availability as a child. “We barely had food. I don’t even know if food stamps existed,” Jocelyn said. She also described in the interview being so hungry as a child that she would eat the paint chips off her wall, which eventually gave her lead poisoning. After being fired from the only job she ever had, Jocelyn was forced to move back into her neglectful mother’s house where her younger siblings still lived. Now, Jocelyn struggles to feed her own child, in addition to her siblings, and admits to skipping meals or stretching budgets to ensure her family has enough to eat.
The research brief defined household food insecurity as a “lack of access to enough food for an active and healthy life due to economic hardship.” There are two types of food insecurity: ;ow food security, which indicates issues with access to food and poor diets in households; and very low food security, which shows that at least one household member has reduced their food intake, and that eating patterns within the household have been disrupted due to inadequate food or money resources. Using the U.S. Household Food Security Survey Module, the researchers were able to identify caregivers of children younger than the age of 4 who could be classified as being either household or child low or very low food secure.
Claudia, a 22-year-old mother of one, scored a 9 on her ACEs test and was ranked as household very low food secure and child low food secure. Claudia’s descriptions of childhood hunger showed how much of an effect ACEs have on food insecurity for adults who went through those experiences. In her interview, Claudia said, “I know how much my stomach hurt from the hunger, how much my body ached, having pains and not having the medication for it, you know? … The hunger, the pain, the depression — it always comes back. It’s like a bird nesting in your head.” Claudia’s descriptions of being haunted by her childhood hunger depicted the relationship later found to exist by the researchers between ACEs and adult food insecurity.
The emotional abuse endured by some participants can be modeled by Tamira. With an ACEs score of 9, and a reported household with very low food secure and child low food secure, Tamira’s emotional abuse and neglect as a child showed strong reasons why she still suffers from food insecurity now as a 22-year-old mother of one. “If a person always says you’re nothing; you’re nothing. Then for a while I used to think I’m not anything. … Because I can’t find a job I cannot feed my daughter. How am I supposed to? I cannot buy her what she needs.”
Knowles commented on the emotional difficulty of the qualitative interviews conducted in the study: “Some of the stories the mothers told us were very painful, and many of them have really stayed with me. But we also saw a lot of resilience — many of the moms talked about how their experiences made them stronger and more determined to ensure that their kids didn’t experience the same adversity.” In a blog post, Knowles also said it was upsetting to realize how incapable current aids-programs and social support services are of assisting with behavioral and trauma-induced issues. She wrote: “According to the moms we spoke with, social service providers often re-traumatize families through punitive policies and negative attitudes that stigmatize those seeking help.”
A strong relationship between higher ACEs scores and low food security or very low food security was found in the study’s results. Of the 19 households defined as very low food secure, 16 scored above a four on the ACEs test, while only three scored between zero and three on the ACEs test. Statistical testing verified this relationship, according to the published findings. These findings will be used to redefine how policies and programs dealing with needy families treat mental and behavioral health of the caregivers as a primary issue in moving forward.
Knowles commented that the Center for Hunger-Free Communities “will continue educating policymakers on how trauma and violence affect families experiencing poverty and food insecurity… [The center is] also trying to work with other faculty and staff at Drexel who work on issues of trauma to figure out how to best prevent and address trauma in Philadelphia and throughout the country.”
Editor’s note: Pseudonyms were used for the names of the participants of the survey.
How does weekend food affect families and children ? We have 12 programs in Jefferson County who are dedicated to bringing weekend food to children and families. Most programs do regular evaluations of the success or areas of growth needed to shape programs for excellence. University of Illinois Urbana did a study for Feeding America. Feeding America is the Hunger in America organization that is the steering wheel for spokes of Regional Food Banks who provide food to food pantries. http://www.feedingamerica.org/?referrer=https://www.google.com/
Please encourage your child’s school to consider partnering with a weekend food program and to help them in evaluating results of program like families being less sick and child having greater success in school. Please carefully read this report and send us your feedback to [email protected]
The Family Resiliency Center for the University of Illinois Urbana does great work around practical ways to bring the trauma of hunger down and out.
BACKPACK PROGRAM EVALUATION EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
This report presents the results of an evaluation conducted in 2011-2012, with support from Morgan Stanley, for the BackPack Program at Feeding America, a weekend feeding program administered by local food banks to reduce childhood hunger. The Eastern Illinois Food Bank, located in Urbana, Illinois, was the Feeding America partner selected for the evaluation. Three key areas were examined during the evaluation: First, close to three hundred families, drawn from sixteen schools in six counties served by the Eastern Illinois Food Bank, were surveyed on a quarterly basis from October 2011 to June 2012 about their experiences in coping with food insecurity (64% had children in the BackPack Program, 36% of families did not). Responses from surveys by families with children in the BackPack Program were compared to families who had children that may have been eligible for the program, but did not participate due to limited program resources (comparison group). Second, seventy-six parents were interviewed about their experiences in coping with food insecurity and in participating in the program (54 parents had children who participated in the BackPack program and 22 parents had children who did not). Third, school attendance was compared for those children participating in the BackPack Program with those potentially eligible for the program, but not receiving backpacks. Glossary – Food Security Status Food Secure – Access by all people at all times to enough food for an active, healthy life. Low Food Security – Reports of reduced quality, variety, or desirability of diet; little or no indication of reduced food intake. Very Low Food Security – Reports of multiple indications of disrupted eating patterns and reduced food intake. Evaluation Findings IS THE PROGRAM SUCCESSFUL IN IDENTIFYING CHILDREN MOST LIKELY TO GO HUNGRY OVER THE WEEKEND? 73% of the households served by the BackPack Program were food insecure at the beginning of the school year. 3 77.9% of the households served by the BackPack Program reported using SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) in the last 30 days, at the beginning of the school year. Additionally, 45.3% of households also used food pantries and 35.2% of households used both SNAP and food pantries. Therefore, at least half of households participating in the BackPack program utilized multiple interventions to address food insecurity. DOES THE BACKPACK PROGRAM HAVE AN APPRECIABLE EFFECT ON SCHOOL ATTENDANCE? Controlling for differences between program participants and the non-participant group, the BackPack Program has a small but significant effect on increasing attendance on Fridays, the day backpacks are delivered to children. Overall, children who participated in the BackPack Program missed more school than those in the comparison group. This is not a reflection of the BackPack Program; however, it does reflect the importance of considering selection effects when examining program impact. Also, further analysis shows that children in the BackPack program were more vulnerable than the comparison group on a few measures. DOES THE BACKPACK PROGRAM HAVE AN APPRECIABLE EFFECT ON HOUSEHOLD FOOD SECURITY AND FOOD RESOURCES? There was a statistically significant increase in the percent of families in the BackPack Program (13%) who moved from low food insecure to food secure between October and December in comparison to the families not receiving the BackPack (5%). However, over 50% of the families in the BackPack Program remained food insecure throughout the school year. HOW IS THE BACKPACK FOOD USED IN THE HOUSEHOLD? Although the BackPack program was originally conceived for child food insecurity, most families shared the food and used it in preparation for family meals. The length of time that food lasted in households varied based on a few key factors, but it was found that food lasted just through the weekend for families with very low food security. WHAT WAS THE EFFECT OF BACKPACKS ON HOUSEHOLD BUDGETS? For very low food secure households, participation in the BackPack Program was perceived to have a big effect on their household budget. Twenty percent of the very low food secure parents interviewed described the program as having a big effect on their budgets whereas 9% of low food secure parents described the program as having a big effect on their budgets. 4 FURTHER EVALUATION FINDINGS ABOUT HOUSEHOLD FOOD INSECURITY Unreliable and poor access to transportation is a major challenge for many of these families. Insufficient means of transportation affects food shopping habits which may prevent food insecure families from buying in bulk and taking advantage of lower cost food outlets. Thus, the BackPack program is viewed as advantageous since the children bring the food directly home. Parents mentioned summer time as a stressful period for allocating food. Parents noted that having the children home from school, without access to the BackPack Program, and feeding other children in the household, such as hungry teenagers, as real challenges. Many of the parents’ experienced poor physical health and this varied by food security status. Forty-eight percent of parents reporting very low food security also reported fair or poor health compared to 23% of low food secure parents and 15% of food secure parents. The number of very low food secure parents reporting poor health was significantly greater than the number of parents reporting low food security and the number of parents reporting that they were food secure. Interview responses suggested that poor health has consequences for meal planning and being able to plan ahead for shopping and budgeting. Parents reported being too tired to plan for meals or to cook and on occasion, turned these responsibilities over to older children. There is no universal experience in ways that families work to manage food insecurity and parents identified different coping strategies during interviews. However, many families expressed that the ability to plan ahead and budget time and money was an important coping strategy. For some families living in more affluent communities, food insecurity and child hunger was perceived as stigmatizing and there were limited available community resources. In these instances, the BackPack Program was considered very beneficial. Program Recommendations Although schools are doing a good job in selecting children likely at risk for weekend hunger, additional training for school personnel about reliable indicators of food insecurity may be helpful. For instance, with training, staff may be able to identify very low food insecure children and households who may need additional resources and interventions beyond the BackPack program, such as the National School Breakfast (NSB), SNAP, SNAP-Ed, and Summer Food Service Programs (SFSP). Also, programs might want to 5 consider including brief measures such as two-item screens to identify families at risk for food insecurity. Children whose families are at the margins of food insecurity may not qualify for public programs but still benefit from weekend feeding programs. Therefore, it is recommended that program selection should not be based entirely on free and reduced lunch participation because it may miss hungry children who live in more affluent communities. Based on findings, most children shared items in their backpack with other family members so food banks may want to consider targeting foods that can be incorporated into family meals. Based on the in-depth interviews, many families indicated a need for assistance in meal planning and more efficient ways to budget for food. The BackPack Program may offer an opportunity to provide educational information about shopping and meal preparation. Future Research Questions If the BackPack Program was paired with consistent use of National School Breakfast, SNAP, Summer Food Service Programs, or regular school food pantry distributions would circumstances improve for those who experience very low food security? What is the role of the parents’ or guardians’ physical health in sustaining food insecurity with school age children? Many of the families in this evaluation had children under the age of five. Because we know early nutrition can play a pivotal role in later development, would there be positive benefits to weekend feeding programs delivered in other settings such as child care centers, Head Start, and WIC? What are the dosage effects of the BackPack Program? Would very low food secure households benefit more if a BackPack was sent home for every child in the household or with greater frequency? Would a larger national survey allowing for examination of unobserved factors such as changes in employment status, income, and number of people in the household, replicate findings that the BackPack program may affect food security status?
6 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This evaluation was funded by Feeding America with support from Morgan Stanley. We thank Elaine Waxman and Morgan Stanley for seeing the value in evaluating this popular program. This evaluation was built upon several years work in collaboration with the Eastern Illinois Food Bank. We are especially appreciative of the support and partnership extended by Jim Hires and Andrea Rundell of the Eastern Illinois Food Bank. We are grateful to the Christopher Family Foundation and the University of Illinois Food and Family Program that funded the initial work. The outstanding BackPack research staff included Brenda Koester, M.S., Meghan Fisher, Blake Jones, Ph.D., Stephanie Sloane, PeiPei Setoh, and Elizabeth Ignowski. Several undergraduate students in the Food and Family Program at the University of Illinois provided invaluable data management support. Dr. Tom Weisner provided exceptional guidance in the use of the Ecocultural Family Interview and mixed methods approaches to data analysis. The school personnel in the BackPack Programs not only assisted us with recruitment but volunteered their own time to make the BackPack program work. Finally, we thank the families who participated in this evaluation. They willingly shared their experiences so that we might learn more about the struggles of feeding hungry children. We are grateful for their candor and have learned from their personal stories.
