| Here's the second half of this week's House Ag Committee panel on federal nutrition programs. (See part 1 at the link.) If nothing else, I recommend reading through my summary of Jessup's testimony because it is AWESOME.
Panel II:
Guillermo Valenzuela, MD
Arrowhead Regional Medical Center
Webster Wong, MD
Arrowhead Regional Medical Center
Matthew Sharp, Senior Advocate
California Food Policy Advocates, Los Angeles, California
Edie Jessup, Program Development Specialist
Central California Regional Obesity Prevention Project of Central California Center for Health and Human Services, Fresno, California
Mathew Marsom, Director of Public Health Policy and Advocacy
Public Health Institute, Oakland, California
Claudia Page, Co-Director
The Center to Promote HealthCare Access, Oakland, California |
Guillermo Valenzuela, MD
Valenzuela begins by saying that obesity will cost a projected $147 billion dollars in health care and then details the various causes of obesity: birthweight, parents' weight, ethnicity or economic class, safety of a child's neighborhood (which affects whether kids play outside), gender, TV, video games, and food. He adds that long term success for any treatments to obesity (other than surgery) is limited. Therefore, although his written testimony does not say this, the best solution is to prevent people from becoming obese in the first place.
Webster Wong, MD
Wong talks about the effects of obesity:
Obesity in children has a direct causal effect on the development of various disease states: diabetes, cardiovascular compromise, hypertension, musculoskeletal ailments and cancer. Recent studies show that American children are fatter, more sedentary and prone to lifelong illness than international children. Statistics bear out these obeservations: The percentage of overweight and obese children has tripled since 1975. More than 10% of infants and toddlers and nearly 18% of adolescents are obese. More than 70% of them will be obese adults. Furthermore, one-third of U.S. children eat fast food every day. Those that do stand to gain about 6 pounds per year.
He goes on to talk about the social and emotional effects of being obese, like contemplating suicide, having thoughts of hopelessness, or being stereotyped as socially/emotionally handicapped and receiving lower wages as a result.
Wong attributes the cause of the rise in obesity to "a culture of fast, poorly nutritious food, increasing divorce rates, urbanization, sedentary activities, and skyrocketing medical costs." He says:
Fast food is more accessible and easier to prepare compared to cooking at home. The rates of children raised in broken and dysfunctional homes are steadily rising, leading to a de-emphasis on healthy eating. More children are unable to exercise in cities where parks and playgrounds are unsafe or unavailable. In exchange, kids are adopting non-active lifestyles filled with video games, television, and computers.
He says that entire families must be involved in comprehensive programs that include schools, health care, and government in a comprehensive way.
Matthew Sharp, California Food Policy Advocates
Sharp spoke about food stamps (SNAP), repeating much of what was said by the first panel but adding some new facts. In the second half of 2009, the average SNAP benefit was $4 per day per person. I believe that's an increase from a previous average payment of $3 per day (due to the stimulus). Also, in 2008, he says that 95% of SNAP benefits went to households below the federal poverty level and over half went to households with income below HALF the federal poverty level. And, nowadays there's in increase in households who receive food stamps and have NO income - from 8% in 2000 to 16% in 2008.
He restated several of the recommendations that were made before, but added that Congress should preserve the 13.6% increase in benefits put in place by the stimulus and they should also increase funding of SNAP administration. He also defined something that was said before. There were mentions of "simplified reporting" and apparently this means that SNAP families only need to check in with the state and verify that they still qualify for SNAP every 6 months. As of now, California requires reporting every quarter but this will soon be changed to every 6 months under simplified reporting.
He also adds that legal immigrants should receive benefits and that the government should connect Medicaid and SNAP so that when you qualify for Medicaid, you can get SNAP too (instead of having to fill out two sets of paperwork for the two programs).
Edie Jessup
Jessup's testimony is AWESOME! Read this:
I see the federal nutrition programs as health programs, as violence prevention programs, and I see food as a human right. There's no scarcity of food. I also appreciate that agriculture is the meeting point tying health outcomes, access to healthy food, and a revived agricultural economy in the Central Valley [of California].
However, there is a political decision not to feed people in the United States.
Jessup goes on to describe a scenario in which advocates tried to find a way for rural applicants to apply for food stamps via computer in city offices, and the county said no because they were afraid they couldn't manage the new cases of food stamp applicants if people were not physically present in their office (which was 80 miles away for some applicants). Jessup says:
People do not have transportation, nor can they take a day off work to come into the county center. But they are hungry and do qualify for food stamps.
And another good one:
Charity is not sufficient to supply the need for food by the chronically under wage households in California.
And then there's this:
The conservative power structure's "blame the victim" mentality results in institutionalized racism that determines who eats, and results in poor health outcomes.
And:
The attitude of scarcity preserves the poverty and ill health of the very people [farmers in the Central Valley] assuring the rest of the nation access to healthy food. I currently work with the Central Valley Regional Obesity Prevention Program, directly working on environmental change and policy change to give people access to healthier food and safe physical activity. In Mendota, where so much public attention has been drawn on the drought's impact on a town, nearly completely unemployed, 37 of 80 Head Start childen are obese as a direct result of diet. The local store carries junk food and poor parents take food bank commodities or donated top-ramen as the primary food on their table. Their health ill be on our hospital doorstep, and the chronic treatment for diabetes in these children will lead to impaired lives, and is now creating poor learning in our schools. We have created this monster of a human problem.
Jessup calls for some of the same changes as previous witnesses. She also asks for a joint ICE and USDA letter making clear that immigrants will not be denied a change in their legal status because of accessing food programs for which they are eligible. She mentions that her hometown has immigrant families who are afraid to apply for food stamps or school lunch because they are fearful of being deported or that they will be ineligible for legal status or citizenship.
Jessup also brings up fingerprinting, which is required (along with photographing) to apply for food stamps in California. According to Jessup's testimony, fingerprinting costs over $11 million in California, it does not reveal food stamp fraud, and it blocks families (who don't want to be fingerprinted) from food stamp participation.
Also, Jessup says that people should not have to stand in lines to convince people of how poor they really are for a handout of food that is making them ill with diabetes and obesity. She recommends providing a federal waiver to enroll everyone who stands in line for commodity distributions for food stamps and then sort out their eligibility later. That way people will be able to buy and eat healthy food and they won't go hungry.
Jessup adds that her county tries hard, their cultural competence is poor and that "people I have surveyed feel their treatment is racially and class motivated."
Jessup reiterates and explains something that others have said - that in California, recipients of Social Security are not eligible for food stamps. Obviously that should be changed - and quickly.
Mathew Marsom, Public Health Institute
Marsom spoke about SNAP and obesity, like the others before him, but made a few new points. He wants SNAP eligibility indexed to cost of living (a great idea!). He wants them to implement the EBT (electronic benefits transfer) system for WIC (women, infants, and children). He calls for putting EBT in more farmers' markets, he wants more food policy councils, small farmer and new farmer programs, CSA's, and community or school gardens. Awesome! He adds that the USDA should take into consideration the higher cost of healthy foods and regional variation in cost of living when determining SNAP benefits.
Then he talks about SNAP-Ed, a nutrition education program for SNAP recipients. He says that the USDA restricts what they can do to "focus exclusively on traditional approaches which, when used alone, are often inefficient, outdated, and a poor use of limited resources." He adds:
The rules, established during the last administration, significantly limit the use of effective and proven social marketing interventions and disallow the use of environmental and system change approaches despite a wide body of research that illustrates the power of these methods to deliver sustainable improvements in eating habits and other lifestyle changes.
Claudia Page, The Center to Promote HealthCare Access
From her statements, it sounds like her organization provides an online application that combines the applications for each of the various federal assistance programs. That way, applicants just fill out the forms ONCE so they can apply for each of the individual programs they may qualify for. She compares her software to TurboTax. This online application is available to people online and at kiosks in school enrollment sites. This goes along with the idea stated many times during the hearing: It should be easier to apply for aid programs, especially because often the same group of people qualify for several programs - yet they have to fill out a different set of forms or even travel to offices for face to face meetings for each of the various programs. |
