Members of Witnesses to Hunger, seen here during an exhibit of their photos on Capitol Hill in 2014 together with staff from Drexel’s Center for Hunger-Free Communities in the School of Public Health and the center’s director and public health associate professor, Mariana Chilton, at right.

Today, the U.S. Congress Education and the Workforce Committee is holding its long-awaited first hearing on reauthorizing child nutrition programs. Such programs support the approximately one in five U.S. households with children who live with food insecurity, helping guarantee children receive adequate nutrition even if their families are struggling to get by, making impossible trade-offs between paying rent, paying utilities or paying for healthy food.

At the hearing, members of Congress and expert witnesses will discuss the programs whose governing laws are up for reauthorization—among them, the school lunch and school breakfast programs and WIC (which provides nutritious food access for low-income…