Located in western Massachusetts, UMass Amherst is the flagship campus of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts' five-campus University of Massachusetts system. UMass Amherst is a nationally recognized teaching and research institution with a current enrollment of about 28,500 students.

University of Massachusetts Amherst

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Sacred Nutrition: Asserting Indigenous Sovereignty and Rights of Women and Nature to Ensure the Right to Food in the United States

How trauma-informed programming to treat social determinants unveils challenges to systems alignment

Mariana Chilton, Ph.D., MPH, is a school-wide Professor of Practice with a faculty home in the Department of Nutrition.  Chilton authored “The Painful Truth About Hunger in America: Why We Must Unlearn Everything We Think We Know—and Start Again” (MIT Press, October 2024).

Before joining UMass, Chilton carried out research and programming on food security, trauma, and economic empowerment with mothers of young children. She founded and directed the award-winning Center for Hunger-Free Communities which developed solutions to hunger and economic insecurity. During this time, she launched Witnesses to Hunger, a movement to increase women's participation in the national dialogue on hunger and poverty, founded and directed the Building Wealth and Heath Network to incentivize entrepreneurship and build family wealth, and served as principal investigator for the Philadelphia site of Children's HealthWatch, a research network devoted to improving health and well-being of young children and their caregivers.

Chilton served as the Co-chair of the National Commission on Hunger meant to advise Congress and the United States Department of Agriculture on how to improve anti-poverty programs. She has testified before the U.S. Senate and U.S. House of Representatives and served as advisor to Sesame Street and the Institute of Medicine. Chilton’s work has been covered in the feature-length documentary “A Place at the Table,” and in the Washington Post, the Philadelphia Inquirer, public radio, and CBS National News.

Women's Rights

Health Equity

Food Security/Food Access

Food Security 

Hunger

Trauma

Maternal and child health

Reproductive Rights

Personal Website

“Denying People the Right to Food”: Millions Could Go Hungry as Trump Admin Holds Up SNAP Benefits

Weekend reading: Hunger in America

Professor of Practice in the School of Public Health & Health Sciences

Nov 18, 2015 10:00 am
1300 Longworth House Office Building
Washington, D.C.
Full Committee – Public Hearing
RE: Past, Present, and Future of SNAP: The National Commission on Hunger

Full Committee – Public Hearing: SNAP: National Commission on Hunger

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