"From Food Insecurity Research to Courageous Action"
Abstract
This talk is provocation to reconsider our research, advocacy, and action on household food insecurity. We all know that food insecurity is rooted in not having enough money for food, and that racial/ethnic and gender disparities in food insecurity are caused by intersectional discrimination, violence, and oppression. Why don’t we attend to root causes, then, when we address household food insecurity? In this talk Dr. Chilton invites people to take courage and explore new definitions of food insecurity that address oppression, exploitation, and discrimination today and across the generations. In doing so, she proposes solutions that go beyond food and nutrition assistance to include trauma-informed approaches, reparations, restoring treaty rights for Indigenous nations, undoing the apparatus of white dominated systems, upending rape culture, and, ultimately, revolutionizing our outlook and relationships with each other and with the natural world.
Speaker Bio
Mariana Chilton, PhD, MPH, is a Professor of Health Management and Policy, at Dornsife School of Public Health at Drexel University. She founded the Center for Hunger-Free Communities. Dr. Chilton founded Witnesses to Hunger, a movement to increase women's participation in the national dialogue on hunger and poverty. She is Principal Investigator of the Building Wealth and Heath Network, designed to incentivize entrepreneurship and self-sufficiency in the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program. For 15 years she was a Co-PI in the Children’s HealthWatch. Her research addresses trauma, food insecurity and the advancement of human rights. She served as the Co-Chair of the Bi-partisan National Commission on Hunger, meant to advise Congress and the United States Department of Agriculture on how to end hunger in America. She has testified before the U.S. Senate and U.S. House of Representatives and has served as an advisor to Sesame Street and to the Institute of Medicine.