January 2021

From making comfort food to speaking with ancestors, immigrant families across the U.S. are turning to cultural traditions to cope with the isolation and stress of quarantine. Latino communities have been affected disproportionately by the virus. In Texas, Latinos make up almost 40% of the population but account for 53% of the state’s COVID-19-related deaths, according to CDC data from December 2020. During a challenging pandemic, comfort food has helped many of us sustain ourselves, whether...

By Mary Kathryn Poole, Sheila E. Fleischhacker, and Sara N. Bleich, The New England Journal of Medicine, January 20, 2021 T he Covid-19 pandemic has moved hunger out of the shadows in the United States. Record numbers of Americans, including one in four families with school-age children, don’t have reliable access to food. 1 Congress has authorized several innovative programs and substantial appropriations to respond to this crisis. Despite these efforts, food insecurity — a long-standing...