ABOUT RON
When Ron Kleinman talks about childhood hunger — both here at home and throughout the developing world — he is visibly moved. As a physician who is driven by images of children suffering, he admits, “There are many moments when I just want to go off and cry for a while.” However, he has very little time for sadness. As chair of pediatrics and physician-in-chief of MassGeneral Hospital for Children, and professor of pediatrics at Harvard, Dr. Kleinman is a very busy pediatric gastroenterologist.
Still, he looks for ways to help the hungry. The soft-spoken doctor speaks with urgency of his work and his long collaboration with Project Bread, a partnership he believes is a perfect fit. “We always look to Project Bread for support for our research projects,” he says.
Kleinman’s entire medical career, indeed his raison d’etre, has been to improve the health and welfare of “the most vulnerable children” wherever they live. He urges his colleagues in the health care profession to work globally. “Our immediate neighborhood is certainly an obligation,” Kleinman says, “but we also need to serve those in the developing world. We have resources that are useful to others.”
Solving hunger means partnering with experts in the field of health and nutrition to change the paradigm of hunger from one of poverty to one of health and education.
Several years ago, Project Bread recognized that low-income families who are hungry are at greater risk of developing health problems. At that time, we developed a partnership with Partners HealthCare and, in particular, with Dr. Ronald Kleinman, to create the Food for Families Program, a national model for antihunger work. To help these families, Project Bread provided food vouchers for immediate care and helped health care workers to register eligible families on SNAP (formerly food stamps).
“We placed Food for Families in health centers because it’s the venue where low-income children are most likely to be brought for health care.”
Department of Pediatrics, MassGeneral Hospital for Children,
a member of Partners HealthCare
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