Across the United States, millions of people face barriers to accessing nutritious food. Feeding America reports that 47 million individuals—including 1 in 5 children—experience food insecurity, a pervasive challenge demanding bold and unified solutions.
The CDC Foundation is committed to advancing the National Strategy on Hunger, Nutrition and Health, which was spearheaded with bipartisan support from the Congressional Hunger Caucus. The national strategy aims to unite diverse public and private partnerships—healthcare systems, faith-based organizations, academic institutions, philanthropic groups and community-based organizations—to end hunger and ensure everyone has access to healthy, affordable and nutritious food.
Doing so means connecting with the many community-based partners working nationwide to combat hunger locally. To make those connections, the CDC Foundation is leading an initiative called the Hunger, Nutrition and Health Action Collaborative, a network that allows individuals and organizations to identify, share and leverage innovations and best practices that support the implementation of the National Strategy on Hunger, Nutrition and Health.
Working with partners to address hunger and food insecurities and ensure people have access to healthy food. That's public health in action.
“We heard from community-based organizations that they often don’t have the time or capacity to be able to connect with one another in meaningful ways to move this work forward on a national level,” said Diane Kolack, a senior program officer for the CDC Foundation. “The Hunger, Nutrition and Health Action Collaborative really creates that container for thought leaders with deep experience and deep wisdom to come together and figure out how we can do things better on a bigger level.”
As part of the collaborative’s strategy, the CDC Foundation has funded an Innovation Lab comprised of 10 community-based organizations—each dedicated to addressing specific hunger-related challenges.
Located in rural Snohomish, WA, Farmer Frog is one of these organizations. Founded with a mission to cultivate communities and nurture local habitat, Farmer Frog uses education, agriculture, food distribution, art, resiliency and wildlife preservation to connect communities to their food.
Through a 50-acre farm where they raise crops and livestock, and a nearby distribution site and educational center, Farmer Frog meets the local community where they are with nutrition needs and education. Their message, says Zsofia Pasztor, co-founder and executive director of Farmer Frog, is one of food sovereignty—the right to healthy, culturally appropriate and sustainably produced food.
“There is real beauty in growing one’s own food. And when we are talking about food sovereignty, it gives us access to that,” Pasztor said. “Individually, I might not want to go out to a farm and grow my own food, but then I want to be able to purchase it from people in our community who do that. And the community needs to have a say in what is grown, how is it grown, where is it grown.”
To amplify the work of Farmer Frog, the group partnered with two other organizations—The Silent Task Force and the National Tribal Emergency Management Council—to combat hunger in rural, urban and tribal communities through a unified and holistic approach, not only in Washington State but in five other states across the Northwest.
“A community will only be food secure if they are food sovereign,” Pasztor said. “And with the coalition we are able to really voice the concerns of the community and bring policy and advocacy items in front of the policymakers and our representatives and work to influence what is happening.”
With more than 200 commitments to date, the National Strategy on Hunger, Nutrition and Health is building broad support and showcasing innovative approaches to ending hunger in the United States. Through the community-level work of groups like Farmer Frog, the CDC Foundation is combatting hunger where it exists, tackling a problem that touches all corners of the country.
“In the United States of America, we shouldn’t be hungry, ever,” Pasztor said. “If the United States becomes food sovereign, one community at a time, we are going to have a lot of problems solved. I think we can really be leading something incredible for the whole planet by doing that.”
A community organization that is part of the Hunger, Nutrition and Health Action Collaborative, Farmer Frog, uses farming and hands-on learning to nurture communities in Snohomish, Washington.