Maryland Shows a Commitment to Improving its Citizens’ Health
Posted by Brian Alexander on Friday, January 14, 2011
Editor’s Note: Today, childhood hunger across the nation is handled piecemeal by federal, state, and local governments and various nonprofits. As a result, no single entity is held accountable for childhood hunger and children go hungry. In order to close the childhood hunger accountability gap, Share Our Strength is launching No Kid Hungry campaigns across the country in which we bring together private funders, public officials, and nonprofit organizations to create a campaign plan to end childhood hunger. We currently have 11 of these campaigns active, and many more in the works. Here on the blog, we’ll be sharing more frequent updates from these campaigns throughout the year, starting today with Maryland.
On Monday, Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley held the Governor’s Forum on Children and Health at Coppin State University, in Baltimore. This was an exciting event for a few reasons:
- There was a great deal of expertise on hand, in a wide variety of fields, with the goal of improving the health of Marylanders.
- It was my first day as a member of the Share Our Strength team!
On my first day, I was encouraged to find that there are so many people dedicated to the health and well-being of the citizens of our state and that the Governor and Lieutenant Governor recognize their concerns and take the time to listen.
While there were hundreds of people on hand, much of the day was spent in smaller, more focused groups centering on a particular health issue plaguing Maryland. I took part in the End Childhood Hunger breakout session and heard the viewpoints and ideas of people from across the state as they discussed ways to address hunger concerns.
Within the breakout session, several ideas were exchanged, and a representative from the Governor’s office was on hand to record the creativity. Thoughts and suggestions included:
- Creating a kid-friendly website so as to teach kids directly about nutritional program opportunities.
- Developing strategies for engaging physicians and others in the medical community in an effort to reach more kids and their families
- Using social networking tools and developing a larger media presence to increase awareness of the issue of childhood hunger in Maryland.
In the end, I am not sure I could have been given a more thorough introduction to the childhood hunger issues that Share Our Strength and its partners are striving to address every day. Hearing the figures and data outlining the persistence of childhood hunger in Maryland will serve as a great motivator to me as I begin my time here. My experiences from Monday only served to affirm my belief that I have joined a team that will work tirelessly to address such an important issue.
January 14, 2011 | 0 comment(s) | Tags: childhood hunger, maryland, No Kid Hungry
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