Meals And Mouths Awareness Campaign

RIDOH Oral Health Internship- During the first semester of my 2017-2018 school year, I was able to work as an intern for the RIDOH’s Oral Health department. During my time there, I was able to learn about the oral health world outside the dental office, which was an experience I had never had in the past. I was involved in a wide variety of projects including oral health research for the purpose of improving current programs, creating new programs, and helping to identify areas where people are not taking advantage of their health policies. However, the project that I am most passionate about is an oral health survey that I was tasked to create, which will gather current information about the overall oral health in college students.

A. How many of you are worried about where your next meal will come from? Are you unsure of how you’re going to purchase next week’s groceries or what you will be feeding your children for dinner tonight? This probably isn’t something most of you think about from day to day. When you are hungry, you eat. It’s easy for you to grab a sandwich, order a pizza, or run through the drive thru when you are on the go. However, there are many families, not just in other countries, but here in the United States as well, that are going hungry every day. According to kidshealth.org, a child dies from malnutrition and related causes every 6 seconds.

Considering the following statistics, it is clear why Hunger Free Colorado’s work is so important: Nearly 1 in 7 Coloradans struggled with hunger in 2013, facing times when there was not enough money to buy food for their families or themselves (Colman-Jenson, Gregory, & Singh, 2013). More than 1 in 5 Colorado households with children (22%) reported food hardship, facing financial challenges to put food on the table (Food Research and Action Center, 2013). More than 1 in 8 Coloradans lived in poverty, including 1 in 6 kids, during 2013 (Bishaw & Fontenot, 2014).

It was difficult to read that countless millions of federal dollars and many of our country's most successful efforts to halt the spread of childhood hunger and starvation have recently been withdrawn. And as a result, this problem of childhood hunger is not getting better but is actually getting worse. The most recent estimates compiled by the USDA in 1999 indicate that 36.2 million Americans live in food-insecure households, which means that their access to adequate and safe food is limited or uncertain. This too is very disturbing information.

There are many people in America who cannot afford their basic needs. In Connecticut alone, thirty eight percent of the states population cannot afford to meet their basic needs, such as food (New Haven Register). The meal gap, the difference between the amount of people who can and can 't afford food, is a major problem in our state. However, an even bigger problem is the lack of knowledge about the systems and programs that can help those who cannot afford food in the vast majority of people that need this help. These programs would also allow for an increase in the federal funding through incentives given out by the government. An easy way to lower the meal gap would be to find ways to spread awareness about these programs to those in need, thereby lowering the meal gap and increasing federal funding, allowing the government to help more people.

In our advertisement for Feeding America, my group appealed to our audience of classmates and Ms. Buescher through the relatability and necessity of proper nutrition. My group, consisting of Irene, Nia, and myself, spoke about hunger because we realized the importance of a proper diet and how our audience could understand the urgent necessity for hunger relief in America. Our audience may not have originally understood the scale of hunger in America, so we provided a statistic to show that one out of every eight people face hunger. This and other devices, such as the image, additional statistics, and textual explanation, were used to persuade the audience to donate to Feeding America.

Imagine your stomach growling, a feeling of emptiness, fatigue, and an inability to concentrate. Most people would associate these feelings with hunger and eat. Unfortunately, many Americans do not have the luxury of eating because of living in poverty. According to the Census Bureau and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the number of people living in poverty rose from 31.6 million in 2000 to 36.5 million in 2006. The number of people living in households facing food insecurity rose from 31 million in 1999 to 35.5 million in 2006. More than 12 million of the people living in food insecure households were children (Labue, 2009). Food America (2017) reports:

This proves that the lack of dental insurance within these low-income households plays a key role in whether or not these children will receive dental care. When these children do not visit the dentist, they increase their chances of developing dental caries significantly. The British Dental Journal disclosed that, “Sugars consumption varies by social class. National food surveys reveal a higher consumption of sugar and sugar-containing foods and drinks amongst low income groups”(Watt 8). Healthy food is expensive; therefore lower class families resort to unhealthy food because it is significantly cheaper. This extensive consumption of sugar-ridden foods is extremely detrimental to the enamel. The British Dental Journal also declared that “oral inequalities will only be reduced through the implementation of effective and appropriate oral health promotion policy”(Watt 6). The dental program will make the inequalities in dental care known and work to reduce those inequalities. Dental health is often times overseen because it is typically expensive and people are unaware of how the condition of their teeth affects the condition of the rest of their body. The all-inclusive dental health program will give people the treatment they need, regardless of their socioeconomic status.

Most people in the United States today are unaware of the increasing numbers of child hunger throughout the country. Today, a staggering one in five kids struggle with hunger in our own country (Francisco 18). Not only does it affect their concentration and grades in school, but also their overall health. Over 1.02 billion people in the world are considered to be malnourished, and hunger and malnutrition is the leading cause of child deaths, which accounts for 6 million children each year (Nah and Chau). When most people think of children and families going hungry, they think that it is just a problem in other countries. However, there is an increasing amount of children and their families in North Carolina

The passage of Healthy, Hunger, Free, Kids Act of 2010, mandated all educational entities who are participating in the National School Lunch Program and/or the School Breakfast Program to meet expanded local school wellness policy requirements provided in section 204 in HHFKA of 2010 (Federal Register, 2014). Provisions included in HHFKA of 2010 established new content for school wellness policies, ensuring stakeholder participation in development of new policies, requiring assessment, compliance, and reporting on the progress of local school wellness policies. Additionally, new rules would require Local Educational Agencies (LEA) to implement and provide new polices for marketing

Does every student have the exact same nutritional needs? According to the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010, all students have similar, if not the identical, nutritional needs. This act focuses on the amount of fat, sodium, and sugar distributed in daily school lunches. The primary purpose of this act is to reduce child obesity in the United States by regulating the calorie intake of students eating school lunches. This act requires lunches contain between seven hundred and eight hundred and fifty calories. Typically, these lunches include one cup of vegetables, one cup of fruit, two ounces of grain, two ounces of protein, and one cup of milk. These lunches fit the needs of several students, however, it is assumed every student fits the

In particular, North Carolina in 2011 formed a “No Kid Hungry” collaborating with state and the national leaders. This nonprofit organization collectively connect kids in need with nutritious food and educates their families on healthy cooking and affordable meals. The campaign also actively engages the public to end child hunger in our nation (North Carolina| No Kid Hungry, n.d). In 2014, “No Kid Hungry” NC initiated at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill 's (UNC) Center for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention. UNC program connected with government officials, business leaders, private citizens, and others who are willing to end child hunger. Its focus is to underutilize nutrition in school system such as breakfast, summer and after-school meals (North Carolina | No Kid Hungry, n.d).

This essay inspects the segments of a communication campaign intended for the activity of the prevention of childhood obesity. It investigates techniques to achieve an intended interest group with a specific end goal to actualize change and support the activity proposed by the Center for Disease Control (CDC).

Despite our preparation in developing our evaluation tools, there were a few challenges during the implementation stage. Many participants arrived, and either missed completing the pretest survey, or were unable to focus as the workshop had already started. A few others left the workshop early and not able to participate in the posttest. Another re-occurring theme was missing identification on the surveys. Although our group encouraged participants to write their initials or another non-identifying information, many surveys were turned in blank. In retrospection, our group should have had a box prompting initials or birth year to make it easier to understand. As a result, we were unable to obtain validity and/or discover if additional participants

A conversation on tooth decay immediately heads towards a discussion of one’s daily dental hygiene care and routine followed by comments on the number of annual dentist visits. One rarely makes the vital connection between their eating habits and overall dental health. Refueling