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COVID-19 highlights food insecurity problems
The coronavirus pandemic has exacerbated food insecurity and health disparities.
Sara Bleich, a professor of public health policy at the Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health, says one of the best ways to address food insecurity is to improve the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.
She says there is a provision in the House-passed Heroes Act that would increase the overall size of the SNAP benefit by 15 percent.
“It’s about $100 dollars per month for a family of four sand o we’ll have to keep our eyes on that and see if it passes,” she says. “It is an effective way to try to meaningfully address the problem of food insecurity right now.”
Before COVID-19, about 38 million Americans participated in SNAP. Participation in the program has increased since the pandemic.
Walter Willett, a professor at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, says it’s hard to predict how COVID-19 will impact food insecurity and inequality in the next decade, but the pandemic provides an opportunity to make fundamental changes.
“Once we get over this, and we will at some point, if we just then go back to the way things were inequalities in food will likely be worse,” he says. “We are at a crossroads here and we need to put tremendous effort into thinking abut this and acting.”
These comments were made during a webinar by the Forum at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
