The Philadelphia GROW Project
In Philadelphia one out of three children lives at or below the federal poverty level. This is among the highest child poverty rates in the country. As a result, over 7,600 babies and toddlers in Philadelphia are at risk for hunger. Recognizing the harmful effects on learning, development, and thus life-long productivity that accompany inadequate food intake, Claneil Foundation embarked on an initiative to develop a systemic response to early childhood hunger. What emerged is The Philadelphia GROW Project: a research, advocacy, and multi-disciplinary clinical program of care for families and children diagnosed with failure to thrive. www.growproject.org
In 2004, Claneil awarded a three-year, $1.2 million grant to Drexel University School of Public Health to create a research site in collaboration with the national research endeavor, the Children's Sentinel Nutrition Assessment Program (C-SNAP) C-SNAP is designed to gather hunger and health data from families in order to inform policy decisions regarding children aged 0-3. As of June 2007, more than 25,000 families in 5 locations across the country have been interviewed. In addition to conducting policy relevant research, the Philadelphia GROW Project provides direct, multi-disciplinary care for undernourished children and their families through the GROW Clinic at St. Christopher's Hospital for Children where over 200 infants and toddlers have been seen since 2005. The third component of GROW is outreach and resource referral for families who request it during the research collection and for families seen at the Clinic.
Establishing a C-SNAP research site at St. Christopher's has yielded 2,500 interviews which have contributed to the body of data that will help inform policy decisions that protect young children from hunger, poor health, and developmental risk. Local C-SNAP results show that:
- 20% of young children requiring emergency care at St. Christopher's Hospital live in homes that lack consistent access to healthy food due to economic hardship (otherwise known as food insecurity), yet one-third of them do not receive food stamp benefits.
- Additionally, children in food insecure households are four times more likely to be in fair or poor health as are children in food secure homes.
- Furthermore, C-SNAP study results demonstrate that receipt of housing subsidies is associated with improved growth of infants and toddlers, but that 84% of those interviewed from food-insecure homes did not receive housing subsidies.
- Finally, a mother's health and a child's health are interdependent. C-SNAP findings report an association between maternal depression and food insecurity.
Aside from informing debates about nutrition assistance, these results emphasize the importance of other non-hunger related programs such as housing subsidies and mental health care access for low-income mothers.
Infants and toddlers ages 0-3 are in a critical period of rapid growth and development during which even mild to moderate under-nutrition can have long-term adverse consequences such as poor cognitive and socio-emotional development, poor health, higher hospitalization rates, and substandard academic achievement. As a nation, the soundest investment we can make for the future is to take care of our youngest children. The Philadelphia GROW Project seeks to ensure that Philadelphia's youngest children, and children everywhere, have the capacity to grow and achieve their full potential. Claneil Foundation recently renewed its commitment to The Philadelphia GROW Project for an additional three years.