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The Pediatric Hunger Prevention Project
Through the Pediatric Hunger Prevention Project, Project Bread trains health care providers to identify families at risk for hunger, and how to help them.
In 2005, Project Bread partnered with community health centers to show that hunger screening can be incorporated into a health care setting easily. Community centers were chosen because they are very effective at reaching out to low-income families.
The goals of the project were to find a practical way to screen for hunger, to look at the impact of hunger on health, and to show that intervention can help families access healthy food.
Health care providers asked families one simple question.
"In the past month, was there any day when you or anyone in your family went hungry because you did not have enough money for food?"
If a family was identified as hungry, they were given gift cards to local supermarkets and referrals to emergency food programs.
After the study, 92% of physicians and nurses who participated said that they were highly satisfied with hunger screening. And of the parents who received the intervention, 100% were satisfied with this new service.
Hunger screening can easily be put into practice, and doing so in low-income communities can be a big step in ensuring the health of these children and their families.
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