posted on: Tuesday, April 13, 2010

By Melissa Hanson

Last week (April 4-10) was National Women’s Nutrition Week. It was an opportunity for me to reflect upon the unique nutritional and health needs of women and their relationships to social well-being.

There are many differences between men’s and women’s nutritional requirements. But there are also disparities in access to proper nutrition. Everyone knows that healthy, fresh, wholesome food is typically more expensive than processed, nutritionally depleted food. So what does that mean for women, especially considering that we’re more likely than men to live in poverty? (Recent data shows that 26.5 percent of African American women are poor compared to 22.3 percent of African American men; 23.6 percent of Hispanic women are poor compared to 19.6 percent of Hispanic men; 10.7 percent of Asian women are poor compared to 9.7 percent of Asian men; and 11.6 percent of white women are poor compared to 9.4 percent of white men, according to the Center for American Progress)

It seems clear to me that this means we have less access to the healthy, fresh, nutritious foods that we need. And if we add race into the picture, the situation is even worse. Women of color are much more likely to live in poverty than white women, and so have even less access to healthy food. According to the National Council for Research on Women’s Factsheet on access to health care, women living below the poverty line are three times more likely to be in poor health, affected by a disability or have a chronic disease. That just doesn’t seem right, does it?

Compounding this even more is the fact that women also face inadequate access to employer-based health insurance and pay higher premiums. I’m hopeful this situation will change with the new health care legislation, as Medicaid coverage is set to expand greatly. But even women currently on Medicaid have trouble accessing adequate services and quality care. Nearly one-quarter of women who receive Medicaid report being turned down by care providers as new patients.

If good health begins with proper nutrition, it follows that a lack of proper nutrition, causing poor health, would make pursuing an education or a career more challenging. Going a step further, earning a living wage is probably also quite challenging in the absence of health. Nutrition is a foundational building block upon which well-being and a successful life are built. So, if philanthropists are interested in helping women out (which in turn benefits all of us), maybe they should look into improving women’s access to good nutrition, especially in marginalized, lower-income communities and consider the roles that race and location play in access to nutrition.

An interesting way of achieving this could be to invest in organizing local farmers markets that are accessible to lower-income neighborhoods, offers reasonably priced local produce, and accepts Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) cards, commonly known as food-stamps. Lower-income neighborhoods usually have a limited number of supermarkets and even fewer (if any) health-food vendors. Introducing farmers markets would benefit both the vendors and consumers. President Obama even proposed $4 million in the USDA budget to get SNAP card readers out to farmers markets, according to this post on the Farmers Market Coalition’s blog.

Over the past three years, the Ford Foundation and the W.K. Kellogg Foundation has partnered with Project for Public Spaces to provide funding for farmers markets, highlighting the need for markets to be located in urban areas and to attract a diversity of customers. A Kellogg-funded study “found that farmers markets could significantly increase access to and consumption of fresh fruits and vegetables in food insecure communities, while increasing opportunities for small and mid-sized farmers.” With benefits to women, local farmers, economies, communities and beyond, surely this is a model that other funders could consider scaling up.

Good nutrition is also the first step in preventing disease and illness in the first place. Focusing on increasing women’s access to healthy foods can decrease the need for reactive health care, diminish social risk and the corresponding costs.

By investing in the well-being of women, we all will benefit, as women are often primary care-givers to young and old. Through increasing all women’s access to nutritious food, we will all lead healthier, happier lives.

Melissa Hanson is an intern at the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy (NCRP).

Photo Credit: Simon Howden on freedigitalphotos.net