The Health and Hunger Project studies and amplifies the challenges and solutions to connecting the health care and food resource systems on the community level to improve the health and well-being in West Virginia’s rural communities. We talk to those in the field, providing direct services, to learn more from the lived experiences of community stakeholders to address the needs of vulnerable populations and collectively come to tangible solutions that we advocate for at local and state levels.
We’re grateful for the support from the Pallottine Foundation of Huntington to continue this project.
Updates
We’re partnering with Marshall University’s School of Journalism for an extended series of guest spots by MU students, focused on what food insecurity looks like right now in communities across southern West Virginia. Six students, six counties, six blog posts— it will be a great series. Stay tuned!
In November 2022, Kelli Caseman joined Aiden Taylor to discuss WV food deserts. Aiden is a West Virginia native and freshman student at Harvard University, with a new podcast. Check it out!
Read and download our 2022 Issue Brief— Thinking Big on the Local Level! You can read and download it from our Issuu site. Print copies are available upon request.
Many thanks to the attendees, panelists, and sponsors who shared their time and thoughts with us. We hope this report serves as a catalyst for continuing conversations on health and hunger in West Virginia.
Catch the recap from our 2022 Health and Hunger Summit Series on our YouTube channel.
Health and Hunger Summit Session 1: Can a Collaborative Conduit Connect Systems?
Connecting the health care system with food resource providers— pantries, summer feeding programs, etc.— takes strategy, collaboration, and people power. How can providers connect patients who identify as food insecure to resources if they don’t know where the resources are? How do they know when the mobile food pantry is in town or where their kids can get a nutritious meal when school is out? In this session, we’ll talk to health care and food resource providers, working in rural communities, to discuss the feasibility of collaborative conduits connecting systems at the local level so information is more centralized and efficiently shared between systems.
Health and Hunger Summit Session 2: Can youth help build a better network?
Most of our community pantries, soup kitchens, and backpack programs are staffed by older volunteers who are at heightened risk of COVID-19 and sometimes perform strenuous tasks without assistance. They need our help, and the answer to that could be engaging younger generations in the work. How can we cultivate a network of younger volunteers to help sustain the vital work communities do and learn the benefits of giving back? Join us for a panel discussion around benefits, challenges, logistics, and ideas to move forward in building a community network.
Health and Hunger Summit Session 3: Can we fix the transportation challenge?
Like most rural states, West Virginia lacks public transportation in its rural communities. People without cars or money for gas, insurance, and repairs often have trouble accessing services and programs, including grocery stores, food pantries, and health care. In this session, we’ll talk to the directors of our state’s food banks and community transportation providers to discuss the challenges and feasibility of improving community transportation options to deliver healthy food to people who need it. Can this age-old problem ever be fixed?
Health and Hunger Summit Session 4: Could better local and state policy improve systems?
We wrap up the summit series with a simple question: What’s next? Can good ideas to improve systems and community health translate into local and state policy reform? Join us for a candid, constructive conversation about local and state policy— the current landscape, ideas for policy reform, and how we can better educate policymakers to make positive change. Together, can we make access to healthy food a priority for rural West Virginia’s policymakers?
Read and download our 2021 Issue Brief— Health & Hunger in WV: Building Bridges at the Community Level in Boone, Lincoln, Logan Counties is out! You can read and download it from our Issuu site. Print copies will be available soon.
Many thanks to the attendees, panelists, and sponsors who shared their time and thoughts with us. We hope this report serves as a catalyst for continuing conversations on building these bridges.
How pervasive is food insecurity on college campuses? In January, we sat down for a conversation with Kelli Williams, PhD, RDN, LD, who is the Department Chair and Professor of Dietetics at Marshall University, and Maggie Smart, former manager of Marshall University’s Food Pantry. Learn more about how they’re addressing hunger on campus, expanding access to healthy foods, and how we can work together to ensure WV’s campuses are addressing food insecurity.
In the fall of 2021, members of our project stakeholder’s group and the West Virginia House of Delegate’s Food Insecurity Workgroup joined for a joint webinar to discuss potential policy ideas to build better bridges between the health care and food resource systems rural West Virginia. You can watch the video on our YouTube channel.
Did you miss any or all of the 2021 Health and Hunger Summit Sessions? You can still view them on our YouTube channel.
In Sept/Oct of 2020, we held our first Health and Hunger Summit Series in West Virginia. With four virtual sessions, we drafted an issue brief that recaps the panelists’ thoughts on the state of hunger and health in West Virginia, the challenges to addressing hunger in the primary care setting, the struggle to address food insecurity during the pandemic, and policy recommendations to improving bridges between systems. Read the series’ brief online or download it here.
The Health and Hunger Summit was a virtual series that took a candid look at connections between the health care system and community resources that address hunger in West Virginia. Health and hunger are profoundly connected. Their systems should be, too. You can watch all four sessions of the 2020 Health and Hunger Summit Series on our YouTube Channel.
Sydney Mangialetti and Gina Valentino with the Marshal University Department of Dietetics shares with us a simple, inexpensive and healthy meal that many of us can try during the holiday season. Great job!
Obesity and Hunger can be consequences of low income and lack of access to healthy foods. Poverty can make people more vulnerable to both. Watch our Facebook Live event as we talk with Merinda Stricklen with KEYS for Healthy Kids and and Dr. Amy Gannon with Marshall University’s Dept of Dietetics about new childhood obesity rates, how obesity and hunger exist in the same spaces, and ways we can address both with policy, system and environmental changes in our state and communities.
1 Comment
Tom Bloom · October 29, 2023 at 12:08 pm
I am the Executive Director of Pantry Plus More in Morgantown, WV and would like to talk with you to see if there is any collaborations or projects we might be able to do together.