It has become somewhat of a management mantra: you cannot manage what you do not measure. And, yet, when it comes to the most pressing social problems of our day – like hunger in America — we need so much more than measurement. We need smarter, more collaborative data collection that bypasses organizational silos. And, we need to couple that data with creative, compelling info graphics that spur innovation and action. We need a Hunger Data Consortium.
Hunger is on the rise in America despite decades of government programs and private outreach. According to the most recent figures – which are almost two years old — over 49 million Americans suffer from food insecurity; 17 million are children — which prompted President Obama earlier this year to challenge our nation to end childhood hunger by 2015.
To meet this challenge, we need greater awareness, understanding and advocacy of hunger and its implications. And, that requires enhanced collection, organization and utilization of hunger related data in America. While tremendous amounts of data are collected, it is often incomplete, dated and fragmented — accessible only to researchers and policy makers, not the general public or local hunger advocates.
Benefits of a Hunger Data Consortium
A central, holistic source of data that includes data visualizers as modeled below and is accessible to all can provide important benefits to help solve the problem of hunger in America.
Benefits like:
- Identifying and closing information gaps – particularly at the state and local level
- Facilitating the sharing of data – allowing public and private entities and individuals access and utilization of the compiled data
- Initiating analyses and visualizations to raise awareness, introduce new perspectives, hypotheses and solutions
- Creating an eco-system of qualified, comprehensive data that organizations can work with when developing solutions
- Collecting and promoting solutions for peer review and collaboration across sectors to help drive both social and market-driven solutions.
To illustrate how data could be utilized from the Consortium, CauseShift, the strategists leading WeCanEndThis.com, partnered with Jess3, an interactive branding and data visualization firm, to create the Obesity and Hunger: Partners? info graphic.
Utilizing currently available data from the U.S. Census Bureau, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), the info graphic looks at the rates of obesity, food insecurity, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance (SNAP) participation and poverty in the 50 states. It shows states with high levels of food insecurity also have high rates of obesity. In addition, 14 states have both higher than the national average rate of food insecurity and obesity. It also suggests that the current levels of SNAP participation are not
high enough to keep food insecurity or obesity at low levels (see Mississippi, Missouri, Texas, Kentucky or Kansas for example)
What Data Can Provoke
While this info graphic doesn’t answer all the questions as to why obesity and hunger are linked – or how strong the links are — visualizing data like this may help policy makers and researchers see the data in a different light and help provoke new thinking and solutions.
For instance:
- Would a deeper understanding of the connections between hunger and obesity spur policy makers to re-write our nation’s food policy?
- Would comprehensive data, down to the local level enhance the ability of advocacy groups and governmental agencies to meet the need where it exists?
- Would the media cover the story differently or in more depth if they had access to this data?
- Would the publication of compelling info graphics generate greater awareness and concern among Americans and prompt them to become more involved in fighting hunger in their community?
- Would an analysis of nutrition, hunger and obesity prompt local communities to incorporate more fresh vegetables and fruits into school feeding programs, install community gardens or resurrect home economics classes?
These types of questions — and more — can be asked and answered with better data, analysis and presentation.
It’s time we stop hoarding data in silos — accessible only to a few. We need to create a Hunger Data Consortium and let everyone and anyone — the government, non-profits, the media and interested individuals — use it to test hypotheses and create new approaches to ending hunger in America.
This post was published originally on the Huffington Post.
Hunger in Oregon Remains at Record Levels
With each Tyson Foods truck delivery, we have asked our local partners to tell the story of hunger in their state and showcase the good work of volunteers and donors. On Thursday, July 29, we delivered a truckload to one of the food banks serving the Beaver State – Oregon Food Bank in Portland. Here is their story:
What is meal time like at your house? For many of us it’s a time of abundance and of sharing with family and friends. Now imagine that you’re unemployed and looking for work, or working at a low-paying job without benefits. Every day is a struggle to keep the bills paid and to put food on the table for your family.
For record numbers of people in Oregon and Clark County, Wash., meals are prepared with food from emergency food boxes. Rather than having abundance to share, meal times mean stretching a limited budget as far as possible and sometimes doing without.
Hundreds of new families are walking in the doors of local food pantries … people who have never asked for help before … people who had family-wage jobs, lost jobs and have run out of resources.
People like Bill, from Beaverton.
“Four years ago I was making $150,000 to $180,000 a year,” he says. “I have four kids, one was in college and one was about to go to college. We had a great house, nice cars, the life everyone was hoping for. Then my company shut down. I missed a few house payments. Last August, we lost our house and my car. I never thought that at the age of 54 I would have to move into my mother-in-law’s home.”
While many people are seeking emergency food for the first time, the struggle continues to get worse for our senior citizens on fixed incomes, the disabled and working poor.
Requests for emergency food have reached unprecedented levels throughout Oregon and Clark County, Wash. Each month more than 240,000 people eat meals from emergency food boxes. Of those, households with children face greatest need. 36 percent of those eating meals from emergency food boxes each month are children 18 and under. Childhood hunger isn’t just uncomfortable, it’s dangerous. Children who are hungry have more trouble learning in school, and early childhood hunger and malnutrition can result in irreversible health problems, such as hypertension, diabetes, kidney and heart disease, later in life.
“You’re even more desperate when you have kids,” says Tammy, an emergency food box recipient from Beaver, Ore.
Rhonda describes her struggles as a single parent trying to make ends meet.
“I’ve found that you try to pay the monsters at the door, she says. “You pay the rent, you pay the car insurance. You pay all the other hands and then you pay the fridge. The fridge is always the last thing to be paid.”
Oregon Food Bank works to eliminate hunger and its root causes … because no one should be hungry. Oregon Food Bank serves as the hub of a statewide network of more than 20 regional food banks and 935 hunger-relief agencies throughout Oregon and Clark County, Wash. We also work to address hunger’s root causes through public policy advocacy, and nutrition and garden education programs.
OFB anticipates people in our service area will feel the effects of this recession for the next several years. It takes time for people to get back on their feet once they’ve lost their jobs, their health care and their homes. As we’ve seen in past recessions, some people never recover as the wage gap continues to grow.
That’s why all donations, big and small are so important. We especially appreciate donations of high-quality protein, like Tyson chicken. We thank each member of our community that participated in the WeCanEndThis Campaign, and we thank Tyson Foods for the generous food donation that will make a difference for so many hungry families in our area.