Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Congress Created Emergency Program To Combat Child Hunger, But Only 15% Have Been Helped
As child hunger soars to levels without modern precedent, an emergency program Congress created two months ago has reached only a small fraction of the 30 million children it was intended to help. The program, Pandemic-EBT, aims to compensate for the declining reach of school meals by placing their value on electronic cards that families can use in grocery stores. But collecting lunch lists from thousands of school districts, transferring them to often-outdated state computers and issuing specialized cards has proved much harder than envisioned, leaving millions of needy families waiting to buy food. (DeParle, 5/26)
The world faces an unprecedented food crisis due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which has caused both severe job losses and major disruptions in food supply chains, the U.N. World Food Programmes Chief Economist warns. When you have these severe job losses, or you have big lockdowns, that means that those people become vulnerable, Arif Husain tells TIME. An estimated 265 million people could go hungry in 2020, nearly double the 2019 figures, according to WFPs projection in April. (Chen, 5/26)
And in other news
The need for connection-- to form and maintain at least a minimal number of positive, stable, intimate relationships-- is a fundamental need that affects our whole being, permeating our entire suite of emotions, thoughts, and behaviors. While voluntary solitude can be great fodder for creativity, and being alone doesn't necessarily indicate loneliness, what happens when people are forced into isolation and are severely deprived of this fundamental human need? Surprisingly, while the physical and mental health effects of loneliness are well documented, there is a lack of research on the consequences of severe forced isolation. (Kaufman, 5/19)
