Pub. 2 2018 Issue 1

D r. Chad Spain is a Utah native and family physician with In- termountain Healthcare who has a passion for service to his community. On his drive home one day, he heard a story on NPR about grade school children in the US who were being publicly shamed in their schools and made to go hungry if they had accrued a balance at their school to buy lunch. Deeply disturbed by this reality and wondering if it was happening in Utah, he did some re- search. Much to his surprise, he dis- covered that the school lunch debt in Salt Lake County alone reached nearly $100,000. While most schools do not make a practice of shaming their school children, every school must face the de- cision of how to discharge the negative balances for school lunch. Mrs. Francis Battle is principal at Nib- ley Park School in Salt Lake City. At the end of each year, she uses her school’s funds to write off school lunch balanc- es. It’s possible for her to cover the cost at her school, but it diverts funds away from other resources. Her school’s chil- dren never go hungry at lunch and she maintains a very strict policy against ever shaming a student who carries a school lunch balance. In his desire to make a difference in this area, Dr. Spain teamed up with staff at the Utah Academy of Family Physicians to apply for a grant from the AAFP Fam- ily Medicine Philanthropic Consortium. Through his hard work and dedication, he received a grant for $2,500 to help discharge the school lunch debt at Ni- bley Park, the school that he attended as a child in Salt Lake. A portion of this grant was also used to help fund re- search that helps identify best practices for addressing the problem of bad debt due to food costs for low income stu- dents and their families. The UAFP extends its sincerest thanks to Dr. Spain and Mrs. Battle for working so hard to advocate and support every student in Utah.  Best General Physician: Karly Ann Pippitt — University of Utah D r. Pippitt was featured in City Weekly’s Best of State: Body & Mind edition as being ranked No. 2 Best Gen- eral Physician in the state of Utah. Congratuations, Dr. Pippitt! Thank you for your hard work and for being a great representative of our department.  Membe rs in t h e News Dr. Chad Spain Helps Relieve School Lunch Debt By Jennifer Dailey-Provost The UAFP extends condolences to the families of the following member: In Me mo r i am Preston G. Thompson 1928 - 2017 23 |