School Meals for ALL NC - WNC Health Policy Podcast Ep. 2
Marianne Weant and Alecia Sanders of the NC Alliance for Health
The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) identifies food insecurity as a social determinant of health, i.e. a “non-medical factor that influences health outcomes.” From long-term impacts associated with “developmental, economic, [and] social” factors to diet-related illnesses such as cardiovascular disease or diabetes, lack of reliable access to a sufficient quantity of affordable, nutritious food can have significant impacts on health and wellbeing. And this is especially true when it comes to children who need a steady intake of nutritious food to grow healthy bodies and develop healthy minds.
In North Carolina, however, one in six children are food insecure, and over 1.6 million North Carolinians live in a food desert - areas where healthy foods are not accessible. And since 2012, the number of food deserts in NC has only increased.
In WNC in particular, the WNC Health Network (WNCHN) found that “the percent of adults in WNC consuming 5+ fruits and vegetables per day has decreased from 8% in 2015 to 5.6% in 2021” and “more than half of very low-income adults in WNC have experienced food insecurity in the past year.” Data collected by the WNCHN also shows that rates of cardiovascular disease and Type 2 Diabetes in WNC are consistently higher in WNC than the rest of NC and the country.
As a preventive strategy to improve health outcomes in our region associated with food insecurities, the NC Alliance for Health (NCAH) supports the School Meals for All model. In this installment of the HPI Podcast, we speak with Marianne Weant and Alecia Sanders of the NCAH about food insecurity, the School Meals for ALL NC Campaign, and what we learned from implementing a similar program in NC during COVID, along with the political challenges and state and local considerations for making Free School Meals for All the new status quo.
Breaking News:
On Sept. 26, 2003, just as this podcast was going to air, the USDA announced that, effective Oct. 26, 2023, it is making it easier for schools to qualify for the Community Eligibility Provision (CEP), “a simplified meal service option that allows schools to provide meals at no cost to all students without requiring families to apply for free and reduced-price meals.“ By lowering the qualifying threshold of “households participating in certain income-based federal assistance programs” from 40% to 25%, more schools will qualify to tap into CEP funding to offer free school meals - if they apply. However, as we learn from Marianne and Alecia in this interview, "a majority of school systems in North Carolina are eligible for (the CEP), but . . . we see that just over half actually participate."
While a step in the right direction, this new expansion does come with some caveats. In a follow-up email, Alecia Sanders shared the following key points:
This expansion does not provide any extra funding for school meals.
Schools that are now eligible to participate in CEP based on the new USDA rule would have to make up the difference between how much it costs to provide meals at no cost to families and the federal reimbursements.
Many schools and districts will still not be able to participate in CEP because the school nutrition programs are not able to fill the gap between program costs and federal reimbursements for meals.
Without additional federal funding, this new rule effectively changes nothing for the students and families in North Carolina who could benefit from no-cost school meals.
Alecia concludes by saying, “We have seen great strides for school meals in North Carolina in the new budget and we are excited to see where things continue to go!”
According to EducationNC, while the 2023 NC state budget includes “…no provision to provide free school lunches...there is $6 million over the biennium ‘to offset the copays for students eligible for reduced-price lunches and breakfasts in schools participating in the National School Lunch Program and the School Breakfast Program.’ The budget also eliminates penalties for unpaid student meal debt.”
If you want to see free school meals for all students in your local schools, please contact your school and school district administrators to share your support for these programs, and ask your state and local policymakers (see the Resources section for links) to support and fully fund School Meals For All programs in your area and for all of North Carolina.
About the host: Andrew is a trauma-informed systems thinker, educator, linguist, and naturalist with an international worldview. Currently an MPH candidate at the Gillings School of Global Public Health, he is also a mental healthcare worker and longtime community radio producer.
RESOURCES
North Carolina Alliance for Health’s School Meals for ALL NC Campaign
Social Media:
@schoolmealsforallnc
School Meal Programs from other states around the nation: The Food Research and Action Center.
Visit Feeding America: Mapping the Meal Gap to explore food insecurity data by state, county or school district.
Visit your specific school nutrition services website for district-specific information.
“Running the Numbers: Measuring Food Hardship in North Carolina Communities.”
Learn more about School Meals and Nutrition from the CDC.
Learn more about Food Deserts from the USDA.
More information on the Social Determinants of Health (SDOH).
Contact your NC legislators:
Music
Evening Shade, hummed by Asheville-based Appalachian ballad singer Saro Lynch-Thomason for the HPI Podcast. You can learn more about her work and regional music traditions at https://www.sarosings.com/
Little Margaret, by Cath and Phil Tyler, is found on the FreeMusicArchive. It is licensed under an Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Additional Music:
Aki's Apple, by Plaistow.
Blister Creek, A Catalog of Seasons, Drone Thistle, and Night Watch by the Blue Dot Sessions.
The Shape of Light (Endless Loop) by Siddhartha Corsus,
These tracks are found on the FreeMusicArchive under license attribution international CC BY 4.0.
_____________________________________
FreeMusicArchive: https://freemusicarchive.org/home
____________________________________
To learn more about our studio host, AshevilleFM, please visit: https://www.ashevillefm.org/
Transcript
WNC HPI Podcast: School Meals for ALL NC with Marianne Weant and Alecia Sanders
8/1/2023
AR: Andrew Rainey
AS: Alecia Sanders MPH, CHES
MW: Marianne Weant, MSPH, MA, CHES
INTRODUCTION
MW: When it comes to food access, food insecurity is a social determinant of health. So addressing the needs of food insecure children helps families overall.
AR: You're listening to the Western North Carolina Health Policy Initiative podcast. I'm Andrew Rainey. In each installment we’ll speak about different public health strategies for improving health and well-being in Western North Carolina. Recorded in the studios of AshevilleFM, in this installment the School Meals for All campaign.
Today we’ll be speaking with the North Carolina Alliance for Health about school meals as a regional health strategy for Western North Carolina and beyond. We’ve got Marianne Weant and Alecia Sanders of the North Carolina Alliance for Health. Welcome y’all!
AS: Thanks Andrew. Happy to be here.
MW: Thanks for having us, Andrew.
AR: So, you all joined in on an HPI Friday Forum meeting earlier this year and spoke about the school meals for all North Carolina campaign. I wonder if y’all could introduce yourselves and tell us about the NC Alliance for Health.
AS: Sure. I am Alecia Sanders, I am the Partner Engagement Coordinator at the NC Alliance for Health and I work specifically on the School Meals for All North Carolina campaign.
MW: And I’m Marianne Weant. I'm the Programs Manager of North Carolina Alliance for Health and I work on the ‘School Meals for All’ campaign, but I also work on other campaigns including issues around tobacco, active living, social determinants of health. . . We’re a statewide coalition that advocates for policies that equitably improve health for North Carolinians across the state.
AR: So what is the School Meals for All NC campaign?
MW: The ‘School Meals for All’ is exactly what it sounds like, and that is: we want policies in place that allow every child a reimbursable school meal that meets their nutritional needs and will help them be a successful student. How that looks varies a little from state to state in exactly how the policies are structured, but every child should be able to walk into a cafeteria and get a school meal, period.
REGIONAL ISSUE
AR: What is the landscape you see for North Carolina that inspired this campaign for school meals?
AS: So one thing we see a lot across the state of North Carolina is a lack of access to healthy food. We see a lot of food insecurity across our state. It may be due to limited access to retail options for healthy foods, it may be due to being placed in a food desert…
AR: Food deserts are defined by the USDA as an area, often with low income, that isnt close to a grocery store. For rural areas, like most of WNC, a food desert means that there’s no grocery store within 10 miles of where you live, and in more developed areas, like Asheville, Hendersonville or Morganton, a food desert is an area without a grocery store within 1 mile.
AS: And being in a rural area, and you know, where I grew up, for example, it was 15 minutes to the nearest grocery store, right? So there are places in our state that see even further into food deserts than that.
AR: In 2019, the USDA found over 1.6 million North Carolinians live in a food desert and saw an increase in the number of food deserts between 2010 and 2019.
AS: In the School Meals for All campaign, one thing that we are trying to ensure is that every student in every public school has access to breakfast and lunch at no cost to their families. We know that a school meal is one of the healthiest and most nutritious things that Americans eat across the board through the country, so we are trying to take a bite out of the apple of food insecurity.
AR: The CDC’s website has at least two studies backing up the claim that a school meal in one of the healthiest and most nutritious meals eaten by school-age children. Looking under ‘CDC Healthy Schools,’ a section titled, “benefits of school meals” lists research where students who participated in school meal programs consumed more whole grains, milk, fruits, and vegetables during mealtimes and had an overall better diet quality than those who did not participate. Check out their website for more details @ CDC.gov.
AR: When I hear school meals for all, I’m reminded of the term you mentioned earlier that’s frequently heard in public health circles: the social determinants of health. Could you tell us about the SDOH and how it relates to the school meals for all campaign?
MW: The social determinants of health (SDOH) are the larger social ecosystem around people that impacts health, and a couple of them I think are really relevant to ‘School Meals for All.’
One is education. We know kids that have the nutrition that they need that are thriving in their school are more likely to have higher educational attainment, and that's going to have long-term impacts positively on their health. . . and their earning potential - which is by the way another social determinative health, right? Your wage, your income. . .
Another one is transportation. Alecia talked about it earlier, the idea of food deserts. . Especially in Western North Carolina, huge lots of areas where there is not great access to full-service grocery. There is high rates of diet related disease, and there's really no public transportation at all. What that means is if there is a food desert. . .then a school is an oasis in that desert where kids can absolutely get two meals a day that meet their nutritional needs and can help them thrive and be successful.
Access to healthcare is another one. Different parts of the state have very different access to health.
When it comes to food access, food insecurity by itself is a social determinant of health. So, addressing the needs of food insecure children helps families overall, right? If you're not worried about the meal your child is getting, you're able to think differently about how you allocate the food at your household. If you know you don't have to give your child practice in the morning because they will have a well-rounded breakfast at school, then you may be able to eat a breakfast that will help you be an active citizen in your home and in your community.
All of these things go into peoples’ budget for their health, their lives, and food. And kids bear the brunt of that in North Carolina – in Western North Carolina and Eastern North Carolina and everywhere between. Kids don't have a choice about being at school, they don't have a choice about whether or not their parents have the money to put in their lunch accounts, forgot the money, didn't pack them a lunch that day, didn't make it to the grocery store because it's too far away. . . And so our position is just like we don't charge three different rates to go to the library and we don't charge three different rates to use the playground, and we provide transportation, electronics and computer devices to every child who needs it in a school food is the same way, and it's critical for the well-being of all North Carolinians that we do that.
EXAMPLE FOR WNC
AR: Is this something that you’ve seen in other states or in other regions? And what have been some of the successes or challenges that have come up as a result?
MW: Yeah! One of the things we really saw with COVID was this pivot to every child having access to a meal at no cost. A lot of the burdens of the Child Nutrition system were tweaked a little bit during COVID and we saw that while we would have expected rates of childhood hunger to increase dramatically during COVID, the programs that they put in place worked, and we didn't see huge increases. And that's where we really started seeing a push federally and in different states across the country to change how we are doing school meals - to provide them at no cost. There are seven states that have passed ‘school meals for all’ legislation but the one that I think is really interesting to note is Colorado. Colorado had to pass their ‘school meals for all’ policy in a ballot initiative. So what we know from that is that a majority of voters support it, and that is reflected in polling done here in NC as well. In Colorado, an excess of 60% of voters supported ‘school meals for all.’ In NC 81% of registered voters supported ‘school meals for all.’
AR: Wow so there’s already a lot of support for free school meals. Thinking about other states who have a free school meal plan, do they offer a model of success that NC can use?
MW: So it can be hard to compare. I mean they're different fruits. It's like comparing apples and oranges - they're all fruits, but you know, the entire state of Maine has as many students as one of our large school districts. They're also structured differently. So, it can be really difficult to compare.
I think probably a better comparison would be just to look back at COVID. As students came back into school, we were serving them all. We know that we can scale up in that way, so it's really not so important exactly how Maine does it, or California, it’s hard to compare, but we know in North Carolina, we were able to handle that, and we can handle it again.
AR: So we already have an example of successfully having school meals in NC? What did we learn during the first few years of COVID about what School meals for all looks like?
MW: Yes. COVID, I think, through schools for a loop. As a parent I can say it through me for a nightmare of a loop also, right? But pretty quickly, because school nutrition programs had a range of how they operated, they were able to implement the seamless summer option. . . which is the waiver that allowed them to serve food in non-congregate settings: so those drive-throughs where people could pick up that allow them to serve more than one meal at a time. . . so you could take food with you to go. . . things like that. Those rules had always been options at different points in time for different places, and so, adapting to those for covid was really easy.
And then going back into the classroom, where kids were still all having access to school meals, it wasn't suddenly a lot of rich kids that started eating school meals. What we saw was a lot of the kids that were just over the line. Kids that maybe hadn’t applied for school meals before but would have been eligible for free reduced meals but felt shame or stigma. . . those kids felt more confident and comfortable eating them. Certainly, some families who can afford School meals take advantage of the program. It's a free program, it's a good program, and that works for everyone. But that alleviates stigma for everyone when that happens.
AS: And I remember when I was a kid, and people that we've talked to have said the same thing: you knew children who were on free and reduced-price meals, right? We've talked to Leah Carper, the teacher of the year, and she tells her story of carrying her 40 cents in her hand and taking that to the cafeteria worker and trying to hide giving that 40 cents. . . and she accidentally dropped it one day and the guy behind her picked on her for not having enough money, right? So, when you had school meals for all during COVID, all of that was alleviated. Everybody was on that even playing field, everybody just ate. and there wasn’t this, you know, “this person can’t afford it and this person can,” you just ate the food, and it wasn’t a thing. So that’s one thing that we really would love to see again.
MW: And so what we can see for our low-income children is when schools are offering universal meals, more of them participate. And so it's the shame and stigma, the alleviation of that makes kids that are food insecure and vulnerable free to fully participate as members of the school community.
The other thing we saw as COVID wrapped up and we kind of pivoted back to the old way of doing things, is people had become accustomed to not filling out the paperwork, right? If your child was in second grade maybe you'd never filled out a free reduced lunch form. Really, maybe didn't know you should, you didn't know you could, and at the same time, the school system had been relieved of the obligation of processing those, in a lot of cases. We know that the processing, the monitoring of lunch debt, all of these things, costs our school systems quite a bit of money, our child nutrition programs. . . and so that was all alleviated and that was money that could go toward labor, that was money that could go toward more quick scratch cooking, and food. . . Things that parents want their money as taxpayers and as parents to go to.
AR: So, cost can come up a lot in these conversations. With the social determinants of health, it can be hard to track the long-term money saved vs the upfront cost. Do you have a sense of how that plays out here?
MW: What we see with return on investment (ROI) calculation. We do know that when you’re looking at local food purchases that we see as much as $2 ROI for every dollar spent on local food purchases. We know that poor health of children has long term costs for healthcare and so improving their health, improving their nutrition, improving their academic attainment all has a ROI.
Challenges
AR: What have been some of the other political challenges in passing this?
MW: Yeah, there are a few things. Every once in a while, we hear someone say “isn't it socialism?” I mean, wait till you find out about roads and police, right? But the reality is for most things in school we just provided all to the kids the same, right? You don't have to pay to have a bus brought to your neighborhood, anyone can get on the bus that needs to ride the bus to school. And it's a really weird point of the day and it's so differently and we're missing opportunities, we're missing opportunities to build community, and we're missing opportunities to instill more soft skills and social skills in our children by treating it like more of a part of day. We're missing opportunities to do higher quality nutrition education because we're treating it as something other than school, right?
But I mean, again, I'll reiterate what our public polling says in North Carolina: 81% of voters, a majority of Republicans and Democrats, a majority of evangelical voters, it really doesn't matter what walk of life you are, most people think kids should be fed: in school, at no cost to the families, and that our current structure isn't working for us as North Carolinians.
Another one is it's not a cheap policy. . . although it’s a tiny fraction of our actual state budget, right?. And it’s something that needs to be recurring, so it needs to be allocated every single year. That being said, because cost is, you know, a concern that people have, I like to say I think that there is a cost to the way we do business now. There is a cost when a child is absent from school. There is a cost when a school administrator is working with a child on discipline. There's a cost when a parent has to come pick up their child from school or they are at home, sick. There's a cost to not being able to procure foods that we would want to procure locally and to not be able to staff our Child Nutrition programs the way that we would have hoped to, right? So, I always think that while the cost itself maybe a challenge, we're paying for a lot of it anyway, and we just pay for it on the other end. Let’s put that money into prevention, let’s prevent all those problems by offsetting them at the beginning.
BREAK
Hi everyone. Andrew here on the WNC HPI podcast. The show that looks at public health strategies to improve health in WNC. Today we’re talking about school meals as a way to improve our region’s health. We’ve been speaking with Marianne Weant and Alecia Sanders of the North Carolina Alliance for Health about their campaign, and we'll get back to that conversation in just a moment.
POLICY
AR: And we’re back. . . So the NC Alliance for health has been promoting this free meals in schools campaign. Where does it stand now in terms of being made a policy?
AS: So right now we are waiting to see the state budget (editor’s note: The NC Budget passed on Friday Sept. 22, after this podcast was recorded). We have hopes that we're going to have some progress towards this goal in the budget this year. We know that this is going to be incremental, but anything in this direction of school meals for all is a win in our book, so we are just going to keep working towards that as we move forward.
AR: When framing that. . . that argument that like “hey this is something we should look at as a state.” What greases the wheel for folks who are voting on it to consider that this is a good idea?
MW: That's a good question. I think it varies a little from person to person, right? I would’ve thought, years ago, that what would have made the case for ‘school meals for all’ in North Carolina would be that we're such an agricultural state, if we provide meals at no cost to families, more people would be utilizing those meals, we’ll be able to procure more items locally, and it'll make a big difference dollar for dollar in our economy. What we really see from a lot of legislators on both sides of the aisle is they recognize the current system isn't really working for North Carolina families and North Carolina children, and it's time to do something differently here.
Now, I won't say that there's consensus that that should be ‘school meals for all’ in North Carolina at this point.
AR: Some critics of ‘school meals for all’ say there could be an opportunity for fraud in how the allocated money gets used, although that may be a critique of how a state carries out the policy rather than of the policy itself. Looking up alternative school meal plans, one I found proposed by the Republican Studies Committee includes condensing Medicaid programs into block grants within each state. The supporters of the block grant approach argue that it might give states flexibility to put money where they want. . . maybe to school meals or maybe not. They argue that it could offer a more targeted approach to kids who need school meals rather than offering food to all kids.
Critics to that alternative, say that a block grant-based approach would potentially cut access to the most food insecure students, as well as families, seniors, people with disabilities and others, and not necessarily prevent fraud.
Exploring that further, in a piece written on June 26th of 2023, research professor, Edwin Park, of Georgetown University pointed out that a block grant-based approach would also mean “cuts to eligibility, benefits and provider reimbursement rates” for Medicaid users and providers, likely resulting in an increase of uninsured Americans and “severely reduc(ing) access to health care and long-term services.” He writes that “because Medicaid is the largest source of federal funding for states, block granting Medicaid would also likely lead to deep budget cuts to other state spending like for K-12 education” worsening educational and income opportunities for WNCians.
As Marianne and Alecia pointed out earlier, a targeted approach on the most impacted kids also increases stigma, which can make accessing school meals more difficult for kids and so, less efficient in its implementation . . . but see what you can find around other school meal programs for addressing food insecurity in WNC.
MW: Really, kind of everywhere, we see this is a problem, kids shouldn't be hungry at school. . . There's a consensus that kids can't focus, that we have issues with discipline, absences, behavior, attention span when they're hungry, and that we invest a lot in our schools. . . and if we're investing this much in the education of our children, we need to make sure we're getting that money's worth, and if the kids are hungry, we can't do that.
AR: So, it sounds like the argument you’re making is that in addition to a moral issue of kids having food to eat, school meals for all is also an economic consideration. . . by increasing the efficiency of the resources that are already being spent in education. . . and also supporting state industries like agriculture. . .
Yea, when you look at the farm to school census done every couple years, you'll see about 20% of North Carolina served foods are procured locally. So, if we increase the number of kids eating in schools, we know that those dollars that go into local food economy make a big difference. . . But we also know it's hard for small producers to provide enough. My kids are in Wake County schools and there's 160,000 students. I mean, show me the apple farmer that can produce 160 evenly size servings of apples for this one day and Wake County, right? There are challenges to the economics of farm to school. There are challenges to the economics of ‘school meals for all. . . ’ but they're not impossible challenges - they're easy things that we can start working through, and the baseline is making sure all kids have that access first.
AR: Any final thoughts on the school meals for all campaign as a way to improve health in WNC?
AS: At this point we need people to join this movement all across the state. . . from the west all the way to Carteret in the East. We have a statewide coalition. We meet once a month, every second Monday. And we know that it's really important right now for people to talk with their legislators at the state level - if they're not hearing from the people in their districts, they're not going to think it's as important, right? Because we can talk til we’re blue in the face on the state level but we need folks on the ground at the local level talking about this as well, talking about it with County Commissioners, with school boards, anyone that will listen.
MW: I would definitely highlight school board members and pay attention to what's going on in your district. The Community Eligibility Provision (CEP) which allows for universal meals without the forms, is a really great program, and a majority of school systems in North Carolina are eligible for it, but for some, it might not financially make sense. So we see that just over half actually participate. . . and that's a lot of kids that are being left unfed. With the paperwork phase system, we know one in six children is food insecure in North Carolina but 20% of those are not eligible for any food aid, including school meals.
MW: Not only are school board members often someone that legislators can talk to and listen to for what's going on in their district, but they also in many cases can implement a universal meals program in their school system right now. The question is coming up with enough funding to close the gap on it to make sure it financially will work for the district, and that's where County Commissioners can really come into play. There's a lot of overlap between these jobs and the roles that they can play, and how they can support each other.
AR: So, while yall are looking at ‘School Meals for All’ NC-wide, there is the possibility within specific school districts to implement a ‘school meals for all’ program right now, for example in WNC?
AS: Absolutely.
AR: Going back to the CDC page referenced earlier about school meals, the studies cited several other strategies that individual school districts can use to support child nutrition, including: getting input from students and parents about items they want served, have an appealing presentation, ensure that students have adequate time to eat their meals, and as Marianne and Alecia mentioned earlier, avoid openly identifying which students and families qualify for programs given the attached stigma.
MW: It’s really important that you talk with your school board members, you pay attention to what’s happening there, and your legislators. And let them know that this is an issue that matters to all of us in our state, that we all want our kids to be successful and thriving.
AR: For folks who are interested to learn more about what this looks like, what benefits a program like that may offer, and/or challenges, where would you recommend that they look?
AS: Absolutely. So, we have we have our campaign website, which is www.schoolmealsforallnc.org. You can also follow us on social media. We are on Instagram, we are on Twitter, we are on Facebook and Linkedin, and our handle is @schoolmealsforallnc. We are always sharing information, ways to get involved, how to contact your legislators. We also provide scripts and talking points – you know, anything that could be helpful. I would also encourage you to visit your school nutrition services website. They have a lot of information on there for district-specific information.
And then, if you’re curious of what's going around the nation for other states that are implementing these policies, the Food Research and Action Center is a great resource. They have a lot of research studies and one pagers and talking points on this so. . . anything to add to that Marianne?
MW: Feeding America has a Mapping the Meal Gap map where you can go in at your county and you can see, you know, what kids are food insecure, how many of them are there, what are we looking at. It’s not uncommon that we run into folks who are like, “North Carolina, there's a grocery store and a church on every corner,” and if that's true then you may not have driven outside of Cary, right? Like you might need to see what's going on elsewhere. Even in your own county, even in your own community, there are pockets of people that are really struggling, and that school meals for all really benefits, but it also benefits every single child. The reality is rich kids leave meals at home when they're supposed to bring their lunch, and kids will be kids everyone has a need to eat while they are at school.
I always say that I will come to your Thanksgiving and argue with your cousin about this if you want me to. I think its game changing for schools, I think it makes a huge difference, I mean, I think we’re the only developed country in the world that doesn’t have a universal meal program. School meals are beneficial everywhere, to everyone. I think talking about school meals is something every single person can do, whether they’re 10, or 20, or 100.
People that are not in charge of the money of the state budget, are like yea, this makes sense, like, kids being denied meals, kids being shamed, like, kids going hungry, that doesn’t work. There really is, I think, a consensus that we should do this; convincing our legislators that they need to appropriate the funds to fix this is a bigger hill to climb, right? But part of climbing that hill is having people of all walks of life, across the state, say “no, this is really important to me, I want kids to be successful and I think this is part of that. . .”
OUTRO
AR: In today’s HPI podcast installment, we heard about how food insecurity is a social determinant of health that is associated with many negative health outcomes. In addition to being a concern both nation-wide and state-wide, it’s also an issue right here in WNC. Offering one strategy for how our region could address food insecurity, we’ve been speaking with Marianne Weant and Alecia Sanders of the NC Alliance for Health about their state-wide School Meals for All campaign. While a state-wide approach could benefit WNC, as they mentioned, every school district in WNC also has the opportunity to improve school meals in our own communities. To learn more about food insecurity or anything you heard in today’s installment, check out our website at wnchealthpolicy.org.
AR: Marianne and Alecia, thank you all so much so speaking with me!
MW: Thanks Andrew. We really appreciate it!
AS: Absolutely. Have a good one.
AR: You've been listening to the WNC Health Policy Initiative Podcast through the NC Center for Health and Wellness at UNCA. To listen again or learn more about public health issues in WNC, check out the website @ wnchealthpolicy.org. To find some of the resources mentioned in this show about School Meals for All NC, head to the blog section at the top of the website where you’ll find additional show notes.
If there’s a WNC health issue that you’d like to hear more about, speak about, or comments about anything you’ve heard on an HPI podcast, feel free to send us an email at info@wnchealthpolicy.org.
A big thanks to the AshevilleFM Studios where this installment was recorded.
Another big thanks to Asheville-based Appalachian ballad singer Saro Lynch-Thomason for humming the old shape note styled ballad Lady Margaret in the mid show break. You can learn more about her work and regional music traditions at sarosings.com.
Other music included in the podcast includes old ballad, Little Margaret, performed on banjo by Cath and Phil Tyler. Found on the FreeMusicArchive, it is licensed under an Attribution- Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Additional music includes the track Aki's Apple by Plaistow; Blister Creek, A Catalog of Seasons, Drone Thistle, and Night Watch by the Blue Dot Sessions; and The Shape of Light (Endless Loop) by Siddhartha Corsus, These tracks are found on the FreeMusicArchive under license attribution international CC BY 4.0.
Be sure to check the website for more HPI podcast episodes and other resources @wnchealthpolicy.org. Thanks for listening.
