The Health Divide: Food insecurity doesn't take summer break

For many families, summer is a season of vacations, camps, and time away from the school-year grind. For others, it brings a far more pressing challenge — missed meals and hunger.

When schools close for summer break, millions of children lose access to school-provided breakfasts, lunches, and after-school meals they rely on during the academic year.

That leaves parents — especially those already struggling to make ends meet — with the added burden of providing extra meals at a time when grocery prices remain stubbornly high. The challenge is particularly acute for Black and Latino families, who are more likely to experience economic hardship and food insecurity.

Research from the anti-hunger initiative No Kid Hungry underscores the scope of the problem. In a survey last fall, No Kid Hungry found that 40% of low-income parents whose children rely on free or reduced-price school meals worry their food will run out before the end of the month. 

Kimberly Rice, a community service supervisor at the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Community Center in Racine, Wisconsin, said that in her 20 years of helping provide food to families in need, she has never seen demand at its current level.

When school let out in early June, the center began offering 25 meals a day for children. That supply disappeared almost immediately. The following week, staff doubled the number of meals, but demand continued to grow as many of the children — most of them Black and Latino — began bringing their parents as well.

Some parents have even asked whether they can take meals home.

“We could easily give out 100 meals a day because the need is that great, and it’s only getting worse,” Rice said. “Many parents have had their SNAP benefits cut or reduced, and those benefits just don’t stretch as far as they once did because of inflation.”

The consequences extend beyond empty stomachs. Research has linked childhood food insecurity with poorer health and worse developmental and academic outcomes. Poor nutrition can undermine concentration, memory, and cognitive development, making it harder for students to return to school ready to learn.

When school ends, hunger worsens

In the United States, more than 31 million children are enrolled in free or reduced-price school meals each year. Yet historically, 87% of those children do not receive meals during the summer months, according to No Kid Hungry.

In my hometown of Milwaukee, which has one of the highest child poverty rates in the nation at just over 35%, city leaders have worked with the Hunger Task Force to address summer hunger by bringing free meals directly into neighborhoods where families live.

The organization operates more than 170 meal sites across Milwaukee’s north and south sides, areas with some of the city’s highest concentrations of poverty. The sites are intentionally spread throughout the community to make access easier for families who face transportation challenges.

The locations provide breakfast, lunch, and dinner to children 18 and younger. While the program is focused on feeding children, staff members do not turn away adults who are also struggling with hunger. Meals typically include protein such as chicken and beef, fresh fruit, vegetables, whole grain bread, and milk rather than relying solely on inexpensive, processed foods.

While child food insecurity is a nationwide problem, the burden falls disproportionately on communities of color. According to 2024 data from the USDA’s Economic Research Service, Black households experienced a food insecurity rate of 24.4%, more than double the rate for White households at 10.1%. Hispanic households had a food insecurity rate of 20.2%, nearly twice the rate of White households.

A separate 2025 Urban Institute survey found that Black and Hispanic adults were about twice as likely as White adults to report household food insecurity in the past year.

Those disparities could deepen as federal nutrition programs face new restrictions. Recent SNAP changes enacted in 2025 are projected by the Congressional Budget Office to reduce participation by 2.4 million people in an average month between 2026 and 2034.

“People often talk about children going hungry over the summer, but they rarely talk about adults going hungry, too,” Rice said. “If the kids are hungry, you better believe the parents are struggling as well.”

Rice said some families are caught in what advocates call a benefits cliff, where modest increases in income or work hours can reduce public assistance before wages are high enough to cover basic needs. 

“I know some Black women who are working two and three jobs to make ends meet, but if they work too many hours or earn above a certain threshold, they lose more of their benefits,” she said. “They make just enough to remain stuck in poverty, but not enough to get out of it.”

A story bigger than summer meals

Local reporters are particularly well situated to highlight the organizations and community programs that provide food during the summer and show how these efforts serve as a vital lifeline for families.

At the same time, journalists can also explore broader solutions, such as establishing community gardens in neighborhoods that have lost full-service grocery stores. (I’ve written about one such community garden project that also mentored boys from a tough neighborhood in Milwaukee.)

Reporting on the rising cost of groceries — and examining what, if anything, is replacing those lost food resources — is equally important. So is documenting the difficult choices families face when they must decide between paying utility bills, covering housing costs, and buying groceries.

The effects of hunger don't disappear when summer ends. They follow children into the classroom, where poor nutrition can affect concentration, academic performance, and long-term physical and mental health. And they ripple through communities already facing persistent health and economic inequities.

For journalists, that means documenting the policies, programs, and people working to close these gaps while holding leaders accountable for the decisions that shape access to nutritious food. As long as millions of families are forced to choose between paying the bills and putting food on the table, it remains a story that deserves sustained attention — and not just when school lets out.