Nemours Children’s Health

In Durham, North Carolina 56 percent of school-aged children qualify for free and reduced lunch during the school year. However, due to a gap in the system that provides those meals, as many as 15,000 children, adolescents and teens may be without access to regular meals during some or all of the summer. Enter echoReverb, the teen-led segment of the entrepreneurship support organization ECHO. ECHO, based in Durham, is a community-based organization aiming to create innovation and entrepreneurship. But why leave entrepreneurship just to adults? Through echoReverb teenagers have the opportunity to become entrepreneurs and use their inspiration to make their big ideas become a reality.

As part of the White House commitment to Hunger, Nutrition and Health, UTHealth Houston and Brighter Bites non-profit organization, are partnering together to implement and evaluate the impact of a comprehensive produce prescription strategy consisting of access to fresh produce plus nutrition education for implementation among food-insecure children and their families through school-based health centers. There are more than 3,200 school-based health centers across 48 U.S. states with over 7 million children receiving primary care at these clinics. The initiative will start in Texas with partners such as Legacy Community Health, the largest Federally Qualified Health Center in Texas. With the national footprint of Brighter Bites, the produce prescription approach will be scaled so that it is available for implementation across school-based health centers nationwide.