While taking care of a sick child in the hospital can be a nightmare for any parent or caregiver, many families must also contend with being hungry while caring for their child.
Stacy Lindau leads a program to help combat hunger called Feed1st. With six food pantries located throughout the University of Chicago’s Comer Children’s Hospital, it offers a solution in the fight against “food insecurity.”
“Food insecurity is a technical term, and it means that an individual over a period of time can’t reasonably rely on access to basic nutritional sources or meet their nutritional needs in socially acceptable ways,” says Lindau, a physician and professor at the Pritzker School of Medicine in the obstetrics/gynecology and medicine-geriatrics departments.
Although one in five US households with children are food insecure, Lindau had no idea how rampant the problem was in hospitals until she was approached by a chaplain who witnessed families going hungry at the bedside of their sick child.
On this episode of the podcast Knowledge Applied, Lindau shares how she decided to address what she called a “real humanitarian need,” the benefits of food pantries, both for families as well as hospital staff, and how the program is providing critical data for future research.
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Source: University of Chicago
