Dr. Mariana Chilton, assistant professor in the School of Public Health’s Department of Community Health and Prevention, testified on Tuesday, March 13, before the U.S. House of Representatives’ Committee on Agriculture, on the reauthorization of the Farm Bill and its impact on child nutrition and health.
Prof. Chilton testified with six other witnesses at the public hearing, which began at 10 a.m.
Chilton’s research includes assessing the health impacts of hunger and food insecurity on infants and toddlers (ages zero to three), which is the most important time in a child’s development. Her community-based research focuses on women and children, nutritional status and human rights.
Chilton serves as the principal investigator for The Philadelphia GROW Project, which provides research, advocacy and a multidisciplinary clinic for children fighting undernutrition, and a co-principal investigator of the national Children's Sentinel Nutrition Assessment Program (C-SNAP). Chilton is testifying using data from the C-SNAP study, which has included more than 23,000 children nationwide and is the most current and largest dataset in the nation about food security, health and development of very young, low-income children.