Leadership Class serves up help to health institute with donation
A $12,400 donation will make it easier for families to have access to healthful food.
Dr. Kathy Selvaggi, of the Food Institute at the Butler Health System, said food isn’t available to feed families on an even playing field.
Selvaggi saw plans for its Food Institute through to completion, just as the United States — and other parts of the world — were starting to emerge from a harrowing public health crisis. In April 2022 the COVID-19 pandemic still cast a long shadow over many arenas of everyday life, and establishing the Food Institute would help ensure that Butler would receive more support in at least one arena.
“The planning for this actually predated COVID,” said Selvaggi, “And then COVID happened, and we didn’t know when COVID was ‘going to end,’ and so we said, ‘You know what? We just have to start sometime.’
“Throughout the United States, we have problems with diabetes and coronary artery disease and obesity,” she said. “And we’re hoping, that with really good nutrition education — and also providing fresh foods and healthy foods — that down the road we will actually change the incidence of these diseases.
