With Mother’s Day just around the corner, we talk to Center for Community Solutions Fellow Hope Lane-Gavin about the maternal and infant health issues at the front and center of today’s public policy debates. How does food insecurity disproportionately impact pregnant women, moms, and children, especially for Black and Hispanic women? How can targeted public benefit programs, like WIC, improve maternal and infant nutrition and food security, and how is Ohio doing on that front? And what should we do as anti-poverty advocates to engender change? 

References:  

Read Hope’s recent blog post, Lessons of Two Years of COVID-19: Impacts of an Offline System for WIC Beneficiaries in Ohio, the first in a series highlighting joint research with Children’s Defense Fund – Ohio. 

Learn more about other recent public policy work in Ohio related to maternal and infant health in The Center for Community Solutions State Budgeting Matters maternal and infant health issue. 

Vice President Kamala Harris Remarks on Improving Maternal Health 

Follow The Center for Community Solutions @CommunitySols 

More reading about the disproportionate impact of the pandemic-driven recession on Black and Hispanic parents and families, which exacerbated longstanding disparities: 

From the Urban Institute: Forty Percent of Black and Hispanic Parents of School-Age Children Are Food Insecure 

From Feeding America: Black communities face unique challenges that result in greater likelihood of facing hunger during the pandemic 

From FRAC: The Impact of Food Insecurity on Women’s Health 

Find your local foodbank to find help, volunteer, and donate here.  

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Ohio Association of Foodbanks is a registered 501c3 nonprofit organization without party affiliation or bias. We are Ohio’s largest charitable response to hunger and our mission is to assist Ohio’s 12 Feeding America foodbanks in providing food and other resources to people in need and to pursue areas of common interest for the benefit of people in need.