Welcome to Public Health On Call, a podcast from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health,

where we bring evidence, experience, and perspective to make sense of today's leading health challenges.

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This is Josh Sharfstein.

Today, some food for thought.

Can we take a public health perspective on food assistance in the United States?

I speak with Jerry Mann, CEO of Nourish Science and an adjunct professor of nutrition at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

Mr. Mann recently co-authored an article calling for more attention to health in the nation's largest

food assistance program. Let's listen. Jerry Mand, thank you for joining us on public health on call

to provide a public health perspective on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program,

or SNAP. Can you start with some background on this program?

Well, thank you, Josh.

That's a delight to be here with you today.

So SNAP, what people in the past called the food stamps,

is really one of the nation's most important safety net programs.

It's primary, indeed, safety net program today

for low income people.

Its purpose is to make sure people have enough food to eat.

It was created way back in the great depression,

but really updated 50 years ago when there was hunger in America.

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