By Hoda Emam, Illustration: Richard Mia, Harvard Public Health, August 9, 2023
On a rainy Saturday morning in San Diego, California, Viridiana Montero joined a small crowd at the Logan Temple AME Zion Church. They weren’t looking for God; they were looking for diapers.
Montero is a regular at the church’s weekly diaper distribution. She needed two packs of size 3 diapers to get through the week, but volunteer diaper distributors had already run out of size 3s. She took the next size up instead, along with a box of fresh fruit, and headed home. The size 4 diapers wouldn’t be a perfect fit, but they’d still keep the Montero family’s economic life — and her kids’ health — from unraveling.
A mother of three who works full-time in a kitchen, Montero says she spends more than half of her monthly income on rent. The rest must cover utilities, car payments, food — and diapers, which cost her more than $100 a month. But she says her income is too high to be eligible for federal help.
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