Page 26 - BusinessWest April 3, 2023

All Hands on Deck
Tackling Issues of Nutrition, Hunger Requires Multi-level Approach
BY JOSEPH BEDNAR
[email protected]
“The only way that we’re going to eradicate hunger and improve health is by centering our work with
a racial-equity lens.”
LIZ WILLS-O’GILVIE
In the six months since the Biden-Harris administration hosted the second-ever White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health, U.S. Rep. Jim McGovern has recognized the significance
of the moment — only, he hopes it’s more than a moment.
“The first and only other conference was held more than 50
years ago — in 1969, the year we put somebody on the moon,” McGovern said at a recent virtual gathering with officials from food- justice organizations, farm advocates, public-health leaders, health- care providers, and other legislators, to discuss the White House event, legislative action that has emerged in its wake, and what is being done in Massachusetts — and what more can be done — to end hunger.
“Out of this conference came an ambitious but achievable road- map to end hunger and reduce diet-related disease by the year 2030,” McGovern said, adding that the conference has the potential to impact even more change than the 1969 event, which is saying
a lot, since innovations like WIC, the modern-day SNAP program, and better food labeling came out of that session.
“There were so many important things,” he went on. “But I think this conference, if we do the follow-through, has the potential to have even a greater impact on this country.”
The March 17 briefing, attended by about 300 people, was co- hosted and organized by the Food Bank of Western Massachusetts, Growing Places, Stone Soup Cafe, CISA, the Springfield Food Pol- icy Council, the Massachusetts Food System Collaborative, Project Bread, and the Western Mass. state legislative delegation, including state Sen. Jo Comerford and state Rep. Mindy Domb.
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Liz Wills-O’Gilvie, who chairs the Springfield Food Policy Coun- cil, saw the historic nature of the White House event, which she attended, from a unique perspective: her own personal history as “a little Black girl from Springfield who was dependent upon commod- ities food before food stamps as we know it now existed.
“Our family’s life improved when food stamps emerged out of the last conference,” she recalled, “so I was struck by the significance of the moment I got to be there in that room and hear both President Biden and Secretary [of Agriculture Tom] Vilsack make the com- ments that they did ... that the only way that we’re going to eradicate hunger and improve health is by centering our work with a racial- equity lens.”
To that end, Wills-O’Gilvie called Massachusetts’ Healthy Incen- tives Program (HIP) — which reimburses EBT card users when they used SNAP benefits for healthy produce from local farm ven- dors — a tool for racial equity as well as a way to improve the health of families.”
She also called for making universal free school meals perma- nent in the Bay State, a priority shared by Domb, who also praised HIP, talked up the benefits of food-literacy education, and called for a conversation about hunger on college campuses.
“We need to make universal free school meals in Massachusetts permanent,” Domb said. “It’s terrific that we extended it this year. It’s wonderful that the Legislature in the supplemental budget has included additional money to make sure it continues through the end of this academic year.”
But she said expansion of such benefits during COVID demon-
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