St. Christopher's Summer Meals Program and Cap4Kids

Student Intern: Chioma Alaka

Chioma Alaka

So what have you been working on this summer?

As a public health intern, I’ve been able to shadow a variety of providers at the WIC, Newborn,

Center for Children with Special Needs, and Grow clinics and participate in distributing meals for

the Summer Meals program. For my primary project, I have been administering surveys to

families to get a sense of whether family’s feel that the medical team at each clinic understands

and addresses the family’s stressors and strengths and to see if there’s any room for SCHC to

improve the way providers screen and the resources they provide for health determinants.

What has been one of the more difficult things that you’ve encountered while working with

this community?

One challenge has been that I have only been able to survey English speaking families because

the survey is in English, and I do not speak any languages other than English, but I feel that

being multilingual is important when working with this population since it is so diverse.

Will you share a favorite memory of working in this community?

My favorite memory of working in this community was when I was distributing summer meals

and one kid was so excited for the lunch that he did a dance.

What resources do you think would be most beneficial for this community (pertaining to your

current or future job)?

When we hand out meals for the summer meals program, providers from the adolescent clinic

would stop by and mention that their patients could really use the meals. I think that it could be

helpful to address food insecurity in a tangible way at the adolescent clinic. Parents and

caregivers who do not qualify for the summer meals program have often expressed how they

need these meals too and I think that it would be great for St. Chris to offer more resources

around food throughout the year because the health and wellbeing of parents/caregivers is

important because it affects a child’s health and wellbeing.