For the Global Health Studies (GHS) minor, we are required to do an immersion experience to delve deeper into a topic we are interested in and give us hands on experience in the field of global health. For my immersion experience I volunteered at La Soupe, a private nonprofit in Cincinnati, Oh, which provides healthy and nutritious meals to those facing food insecurity in Cincinnati. While volunteering at La Soupe, I was struck by the large amount of children I saw facing food insecurity and it made me want to know more about the long term effects food insecurity has on children. My general research area is food insecurity. The research question I have asked is: What does the evidence tell us about the health outcomes of food insecurity? This topic is relevant to global health because food insecurity, often accompanied by poverty, can cause negative health consequences, which in turn can have costly implications for the economy and the healthcare system. My work was conducted by being observant of my surroundings. Those observations informed my research question for my literature review. In conjunction with my observations, I also did an in depth literature review which covered topics such as poverty, food insecurity, malnutrition, and governmental food assistance programs. After completing the immersion experience and the literature review, it became clear that society and the literature has a tendency to blame parents, especially mothers, for their child’s food insecurity, but does not acknowledge that society doesn’t offer sufficient support. Moving forward, there is a strong need to change the language surrounding parents and mothers when it comes to food insecurity. In addition, more research needs to be done to find out what supports work and what supports don’t work (e.g., governmental food assistance, food pantries, nonprofits etc.) and what new approaches could be useful to reduce food insecurity in the United States (e.g., multifaceted solutions). Overall, this experience was relevant for my intended career because I would like to work in the nonprofit sector, and through this experience I was able to get a closer look at how a nonprofit organization operates.
Author: Chloe Butler
Faculty Advisors: Cameron Hay-Rollins, Department of Anthropology, and Paul Flaspohler, Department of Psychology
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