No Kid Hungry providing 14 state AAP chapters with $280,000 in grants to fuel strategy
Contact: Adrienne Carter at acarter@strength.org
Washington, DC — Building on an ongoing partnership, Share Our Strength’s No Kid Hungry campaign has issued $280,000 in grants to 14 state chapters of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), including five new chapters.
By leveraging the role of pediatricians as a leading voice for children, the 14 grantees will work across their states to improve food insecurity screening and connect families with federal programs like SNAP and WIC, as well as other resources.
This grant program supports the commitment from No Kid Hungry and AAP recently highlighted in the White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition and Health to offer training to all 67,000 AAP pediatricians on how to both screen for nutrition security and refer patients to trusted resources.
Pediatricians are trusted family advisors. In the first five years of life alone, children and their families visit pediatricians 20 times, giving them detailed access and insight into the lives of the families they serve. This knowledge can be invaluable in the fight against food insecurity, but often its use is not being maximized. This grant program seeks to change that.
“We know that well-nourished kids are better able to learn, thrive and grow into their full potential. Addressing food insecurity in the early years is critical, and the role pediatricians can play in doing so cannot be understated,” said Caron Gremont, Director of No Kid Hungry. “This collaboration between No Kid Hungry, AAP and grantee AAP chapters will help further their crucial work and connect more families with the tools they need.”
“Nutrition plays a critical role in children’s overall health and development, and pediatricians are here to partner with families to ensure they have access to healthy food,” said Moira Szliagyi, MD, PhD, FAAP, president of the American Academy of Pediatrics. A full list of AAP state chapters receiving grants can be found below:
- Arizona
- Arkansas
- Colorado
- District of Columbia
- Florida*
- Georgia
- Illinois
- Louisiana*
- Maryland*
- Minnesota*
- Montana
- New York 2*
- Texas *
- Utah*
* Denotes new grantee
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About No Kid Hungry
No child should go hungry in America. But millions of kids in the United States live with hunger. No Kid Hungry is working to end childhood hunger by helping launch and improve programs that give all kids the healthy food they need to thrive. This is a problem we know how to solve. No Kid Hungry is a campaign of Share Our Strength, an organization committed to ending hunger and poverty.