During the summer, far too many children and adolescents experience food insecurity, weight gain, and learning loss, compromising their health and ability to thrive during summer break and beyond. A key strategy to address these issues is to connect more students — especially low-income students — to high-quality summer meal and enrichment programs, which support student food security, health, and learning.In this brief, Heather Hartline-Grafton, DrPH, RD, Senior Nutrition Policy & Research Analyst with the Food Research & Action Center (FRAC), summarizes important research on summertime food insecurity, weight gain, and learning loss, and then describes the value and effectiveness of the federal Summer Nutrition Programs and summer enrichment programming.
About FRAC
FRAC is the leading national nonprofit organization working to eradicate poverty-related hunger and undernutrition in the United States. To accomplish this goal, FRAC:
- lead efforts to identify and communicate the connections among poverty, hunger, and obesity among low-income people;
- conduct research to document the extent of hunger, its impact, and effective solutions;
- seek stronger federal, state and local public policies that will reduce hunger, undernutrition, and obesity;
- monitor the implementation of laws and serve as a watchdog of programs;
- provide coordination, training, technical assistance, and support on nutrition and anti-poverty issues to a nationwide network of advocates, service providers, food banks, program administrators and participants, and policymakers; and
- conduct public information campaigns to help promote changes in attitude and policies.
Learn more at: http://frac.org/