Mary Summers, MA, MPhil

CPHI Associate Fellow

Title: Senior Fellow, Robert A. Fox Leadership Program; Lecturer, Political Science/Health and Societies, Penn SAS

Public Health Interests:

Health inequalities, nutrition, food access, food systems, obesity, school health and climate

Current Public-Health Related Activities:

Mary Summers teaches academically based community service courses on the Politics of Food and Agriculture and Healthy Schools.  She has worked with community partners to develop several health related projects including the Coalition Against Hunger’s Food Stamp Enrollment Campaign and the West Philadelphia Recess Initiative, which involves Penn students in organizing games at recess as a way to promote exercise and prevent  bullying. She was the P.I. for the USDA grant that established the Food Stamp Enrollment Campaign and continues to investigate barriers to food stamp access. Her research interests include institutionally based approaches to service-learning, federal nutrition programs, Farm Bill politics, and the USDA.

Select Publications:

“Service-Learning with a Food Stamp Enrollment Campaign: Community and Student Benefits,” Michigan Journal of Service Learning, Spring, 2008, (with Judith Porter, Suzanne Toton, and Hillary Aisenstein).

“Making Food Stamps Work: A Report on the Greater Philadelphia Coalition Against Hunger’s Food Stamp Enrollment Campaign 2003-2006,” (Greater Philadelphia Coalition Against Hunger,www.hungercoalition.org, 2006)