Center on Hunger and Poverty

THE CENTER ON HUNGER and Poverty (CHP) is part of the Institute on Assets and Social Policy (IASP) at the Heller School for Social Policy and Management at Brandeis University, located in Waltham, Massachusetts. The CHP developed from the Physician Task Force on Hunger in America, which, based at Harvard University under Dr. Larry J. Brown, was responsible for field trips and reporting across the country concerning the issue of hunger, which was of growing importance during the 1980s. The reports concerned not just hunger but its root causes, poverty, and economic inequality. It moved from Tufts University to its current home at Brandeis University in 2000.

The CHP has graduated from working through the Asset Development Institute and the Food Security Institute through a variety of special products. As an independent entity, it is able to employ greater focus and awareness of its aims, enabling it to compete better for research grants and attracting top-level research staff.

As part of the IASP, the CHP has focused on research in the following areas: “domestic hunger, including its dimensions, health, and nutritional consequences, and policy responses over time; hunger and food insecurity prevalence at the national, state, and local levels; promotion and expansion of the child nutrition and food stamp programs; development of nutrition education materials, specifically designed for low-income families with children; and program design and evaluation for innovative community initiatives in the hunger/nutrition field.”

[Page 139]These objectives include a wide range of areas, from research and publication to policy formulation and advocacy, outreach, training, and development of educational materials. These activities require a wide range of skills and resources to complete satisfactorily.

Successes achieved by the CHP to date include initiating and drafting the Hunger Relief Act, preparing the National Food Security Scale and the Welfare Development Scale, being part of a network initiating and sponsoring the Mickey Leland Childhood Hunger Relief Act, conducting the “1993 Congressional Analysis: 30 Million Hungry Americans and Two Americas: Child Poverty in the U.S.,” creating the Nutrition-Cognition Initiative, and being part of an initiative entitled the Medford Declaration to End Hunger in the U.S., which mobilized the leaders of more than 3,000 organizations that represent in excess of approximately 100 million members.

Special projects include Feeding Children Better, which provides resources and technical expertise to food banks across the country to improve the nutritional quality of supplies. An educational program entitled Know Hunger is designed to help students understand hunger and nutrition issues directly affecting their neighborhoods and is organized in association with the Gerda and Kurt Klein Foundation, which is a public, nonprofit organization aimed at helping young people to develop social awareness and then translate this into community service.

As one of the National Anti-Hunger Organizations, the CHP subscribes to the Blueprint to End Hunger, which recognizes that large-scale social change is necessary to end hunger in society, notwithstanding the charitable nature of many members of American society. This commitment includes the belief that “the root cause of hunger is a lack of adequate purchasing power in millions of households. When individuals and families do not have the resources to buy enough food, hunger results. As a nation we must encourage work and also assure all who work that the results of their labor will be sufficient to provide for the basic needs of their families.”

...