As part of Community Health Improvement Week in New Haven, the Connecticut Mental Health Center (CMHC) is hosting Hunger As a Health Issue: Community Food Needs Assessment and Solutions. This special “lunch and learn” event is co-hosted by four community-based organizations committed to promoting sustainable local food systems and addressing food insecurity. Fresh Advantage founder Marydale DeBor coordinated this event as part of her ongoing advisory role for CMHC’s “Food Transformation” initiative. CMHC, Connecticut’s leading mental health agency for the Greater New Haven area, is managed by the Yale School of Medicine, where Marydale is a lecturer in the Department of Psychiatry.

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The speaker will discuss how and why food insecurity can be integrated into the Community Health Needs Assessment (CHNA) that nonprofit hospitals must perform under the requirements of the Affordable Care Act.

Once these needs have been identified and assessed, they can be addressed with meaningful community benefit programs and investments as part of the implementation plans that non-profit hospitals are also required to develop and execute.

Hunger As a Health Issue: Community Food Needs Assessment and Solutions will be held Wednesday, June 4, at the CMHC in New Haven. A buffet lunch will be served at noon, followed by the presentation and discussion from 12:45–2:00 pm.

If you would like to attend, please RSVP Marydale at Marydale.debor@yale.edu by May 30.

If you can’t attend but would like more information about including food insecurity and access to healthy food in your hospital’s CHNA and community benefit program, call Fresh Advantage at 203-745-1796, or email Mdebor@freshadvantage.com.