#IGotNothing: Young Adults in San Francisco Speak Out on Food Instability

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Last week, I attended a photography exhibit hosted by the Young Adults Photovoice Project (YAPP) exploring what food instability looks like in the lives of San Francisco’s transitional age youth living in supportive housing. Community Housing Partnership, the nonprofit that runs the property where all the participants in this project live, defines transitional age youth (TAY) “as individuals from 18 to 25 years of age who are homeless or at high risk of being homeless. Many TAY are young adults who have aged out of the foster care system.” Researchers at the University of California-Berkeley worked for months with nine young people to document their experiences with food access, nutrition, poverty, and public benefits programs. Each participant received a digital camera to take photos with as well as payment for their time.

Jade, YAPP participant, talking about her photographs

Jade, YAPP participant, talking about her photographs

The YAPP participants developed their own definition of food instability as part of this project. Specifically, they said that food instability is “not having access to food that is healthy and nourishing to our body, mind, and soul. Barriers such as stigma, affordability, and food stamp regulations destabilize our lives and exacerbate hunger.” These themes were reflected in the photos displayed at the event.

For example, one participant, Josh, spoke about how his $196 monthly food stamp benefit isn’t enough to get him through the full month. The photo he’s gesturing to below shows a tiny portion of a microwaveable hamburger that he notes he had to pay for out of pocket late in the month when his food stamp allotment is typically down to zero.

Josh, YAPP participant, shares his photos as his dog looks on

Josh, YAPP participant, shares his photos as his dog looks on

Another participant’s caption (see bottom photo) speaks to the tension created by having a vending machine in the lobby of their residence. Having the vending machine on-site might seem convenient, but Justin sees some serious downsides: it is an expensive way to eat, the options aren’t very healthy, and sometimes the machine will take your money without dispensing the snack inside.

Another major theme was food waste. YAPP participants see food going to waste all around them (a photo of a trash can full of Safeway rotisserie chickens was particularly hard to look at alongside other photos depicting the limited meals participants are able to create for themselves on tight budgets). But participants also struggled with the practical challenges of reducing food waste: they aren’t interested in expired cast-offs from wealthier people. They’d rather make their own choices to eat what they want, when they want, and have the financial standing to make that happen.

"Snacks on Deck" by Justin Smith

“Snacks on Deck” by Justin Smith

Unfortunately, our food-oriented public benefits programs don’t make that easy. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, the average SNAP participant in California in 2014 only received $141.99 each month. That’s less than $5 per day. Some participants in the #IGotNothing exhibit spoke of times when their benefits were cut off abruptly for administrative reasons they didn’t fully understand.

The captions accompanying their photos speak to the corrosive effects of this constant instability. As transitional age youth are navigating their early adulthood, how effectively are our public benefits programs supporting their ambitions, their creativity and their resilience?

Based on the experiences YAPP participants shared, we have a lot of work to do to eliminate administrative red tape, to increase funding for programs like SNAP that promote self-determination and nutrition, and to support our young people as they transition to fully independent living.

Why Wouldn’t a Conference about Maternal and Child Health Include a Session on Abortion?

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I recently attended the Association of Maternal and Child Health Programs (AMCHP) annual conference in Washington, D.C. While I learned a lot about what is happening at the state and local level to improve maternal and child health outcomes, I was surprised that abortion was not included in any of the breakout session titles or as a focus in any of the plenaries I attended. As the Guttmacher Institute notes, “Nearly half of pregnancies among American women are unintended, and about four in 10 of these are terminated by abortion.” A total of 3.95 million births took place in the U.S. during 2011, compared with just over 1 million abortions that same year. Why wouldn’t a conference about maternal and child health include a session on abortion?
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2015 Reading List

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In November, I asked my Facebook friends for book recommendations:

Asking friends for book recs

I received over 25 wonderful responses and cataloged them in a spreadsheet for myself. But recently, as I read several other people’s excellent end of year book lists, I thought, “Why not create and share my own? Who says you actually have to read the books before recommending them?!” Here I present a list of nine books to check out in 2015 pulled entirely from suggestions I received (and listed alphabetically by the author’s last name). I received so many recommendations that I chose to include just a small selection here, focusing on books that I hadn’t read yet or hadn’t heard of.

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Why Do Some Women Die Giving Birth?

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Claire Wendland is an anthropologist with training as an obstetrician, which positions her to understand both the social and medical dimensions of maternal deaths. I recently heard Wendland present findings from her extensive field research in Malawi, which explores different narratives or explanations for why women die from pregnancy and birth-related causes in a specific geographic context. Through interviews with workers in the health care industry in Malawi, Wendland has found that a high maternal mortality rate coupled with a lack of clarity around the exact causes of these deaths give rise to multiple and varying explanations for why they happen. Diverse experts advance divergent, often contradictory explanations for deaths that reveal competing social or political agendas. The explanations are used to understand risk, assign blame, teach biomedical concepts, present moral lessons, and critique Malawian society. Continue reading

Improvements to WIC

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Heather Hartline-Grafton of the Food Research and Action Center (FRAC)* published a research brief last week summarizing the impact of changes to the WIC food packages. The brief provides a quick and accessible introduction to how WIC works, details changes to what foods are now available in retail stores, and outlines the relationship between these changes and participants’ nutritional intake.

WIC (short for the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children) is a federally-funded program designed to improve nutrition and alleviate hunger among lower-income children and their pregnant or postpartum moms. Continue reading

Legitimizing Racist Science, Naturalizing Health Disparities

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On August 15, I attended the first part of an all-day event commemorating the work of Troy Duster, a sociologist who documents the relationship between biomedical science, racism and other forms of social stratification, and public policy. The University of California-Berkeley’s Center for Genetics and Society, which aims to “encourage responsible uses and effective societal governance of human genetic and reproductive technologies and other emerging technologies,” hosted the event. Dorothy Roberts gave the opening address and framed her remarks around the pervasive myths that exist regarding the relationship between science and race and how these myths help naturalize racial health disparities. Continue reading