The Friedman Nutrition School and Hunger in the United States
In 1968, the Citizens Board of Inquiry Into Hunger and Malnutrition in America estimated that 14 million Americans were going hungry. Nearly thirty years later, the U.S. Department of Agriculture reported that nearly 35 million Americans lived in households experiencing hunger and food insecurity. In the years between these two points in time, the extent of hunger has been the subject of sharp political debate and the object of sustained attention in the scientific community. Advances have been made in the effort to produce reliable data on the number of hungry Americans, and many of these developments have been spearheaded by the school’s Center on Hunger, Poverty and Nutrition Policy, and its predecessor, the Physician Task Force on Hunger in America at the Harvard School of Public Health.
The Center on Hunger, Poverty and Nutrition Policy (CHPNP) is both a unifying concept and a set of programs that focus on:
- food security, hunger and poverty in the United States
- US food policy as it affects the safety, integrity, nutritional quality, and accessibility of the nation’s food supply and the nutritional guidance given to the American population
- health and nutrition communication to provide accurate information for consumers and organizations in ways that will promote healthy behaviors among the American people.
The CHPNP programs accomplish their goals in these areas using the following approaches:
- education and training
- MS and PhD degree programs in food and nutrition policy
- conferences, symposia and training opportunities for mid-career professionals and interested individuals and organizations
- research and scholarship
- development of theoretical models of intervention
- field application of methods
- identify the most successful approaches to alleviating problems of food insecurity and hunger and to improving the nutritional health of the American population
- monitoring and evaluation of programs
- effective communication of new knowledge to nutrition and health professionals, policy makers in government and in the private sector, and the American public
- advocacy for policy, regulation and programs designed to advance the health and nutritional status of the American public
The work of CHPNP focuses on the particular needs of special populations: low-income children and families; populations with special needs due to age or physiologic status; ethnic, linguistic, and racial minorities; immigrants; groups with nutritional vulnerabilities related to undernutrition, obesity, disability, and other conditions.
The CHPNP is comprised of several entities which form the nucleus of its offerings. The areas of specialty are nutrition communication; nutritional epidemiology; agriculture, food, and the environment; and food policy and applied nutrition.