FRAC Chat

With summer fast approaching, and Congress’s failure to extend the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) child nutrition waiver authority –which will significantly limit access to summer meals—, Pandemic EBT (P-EBT ) will be even more important this summer to both school-age and young children.
Children can utilize both the Pandemic EBT program as well as visit meal sites this summer. Summer P-EBT provides benefits to families on an EBT card to purchase food to replace the school meals they lost access to during the summer months. These complimentary programs can help ensure that children have access to healthy, nutritious meals throughout the summer. In the summer of 2021, 47 states, 3 territories, and the District of Columbia distributed an estimated $10.9 billion to families in Summer P-EBT benefits.
On May 9, USDA released its summer 2022 P-EBT guidance, which includes a Q&A, State Plan Template, and Policy Memo

In recognition of Older Americans Month, FRAC is releasing a two-part blog series on food insecurity among older adults.

Part 1 focuses on food insecurity’s prevalence among older adults as well as its disproportionate rates among Black and Latinx households and examines risk factors that make older adults more likely to experience food insecurity.

Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) participants are among those categorically eligible for discounts of up to $30 per month toward internet service. They also can “receive a one-time discount of up to $100 to purchase a laptop, desktop computer, or tablet from participating providers if the household contributes more than $10 and less than $50 toward the purchase price.”

The discounts are provided for households with lower incomes through the new federal Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP). In addition to households with a member participating in SNAP, ACP-eligible households also include those with a member eligible for the National School Lunch Program or National School Breakfast Program , and those in receipt of the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), Medicaid, SSI (Supplemental Security Income), Pell grants, federal housing assistance, or Lifeline. Households participating in the Food Distribution on Indian Reservations Program (FDPIR) or certain other tribal programs are also ACP-eligible; such households on tribal reservations can receive ACP internet discounts of up to $75 a month.

April is National Minority Health Month, a time to raise awareness about health disparities related to hunger and access to food that continues to affect people from racial and ethnic minority groups. It’s a time to encourage action through health education, early detection.
In the following video, Beverley Wheeler, director of D.C. Hunger Solutions, and Dr. Ana Caskin, pediatrician, and Associate Director of Community Pediatrics at MedStar Georgetown University Hospital, discussed disparities related to hunger that impact minority communities and the correlation between trauma and hunger for children and their families. They also shared strategies used to maximize the impact of federal nutrition programs.

At the height of the pandemic, 285,000 New Jersey households did not have reliable access to affordable, nutritious food, according to a new report from FRAC, with support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF). Black and Latino households were more likely to experience hunger at two to three times the rate of white households. This is just another troubling example of how the COVID-19 pandemic has exasperated the longstanding racial and ethnic disparities in the state, and across the country. Hunger and Its Solutions in New Jersey: Landscape Analysis of Current Initiatives, Recommended Action, and Emerging Opportunities for Further Investment  aims to inform stakeholders about what additional policies, systems changes, cross-sector outreach, and programmatic initiatives, if implemented in the coming years, would result in the most significant gains in food security.