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2010 Reauthorization of the Child Nutrition Act: Making the Most of This Opportunity

May 17, 2023· tags : · Comments Off

It’s that time again — the 2010 Child Nutrition Reauthorization is underway! If you want to see change in your child’s school food program, your moment to be heard is now. For those of you who are not up to speed on the Child Nutrition Act, it is an essential piece of legislation that helps shape the food programs in American schools. Unlike the National School Lunch Program and School Breakfast Program, which are both permanently authorized, the Child Nutrition Act expires and needs to be reauthorized every 5 years.

Because this chance only comes around twice a decade, Reauthorization is an extremely important time to critically evaluate and address what is and is not working in the federal Child Nutrition Programs. This give Capitol Hill the opportunity to reshape and improve the food programs in over 100,000 public and private schools across the country. During this process, it is imperative that Congress allocate sufficient funding and resources in order to integrate greater access to fresh, healthy food for every child, as well as nutrition education that will help cement healthy habits in the future.

The Senate has already passed the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act, on August 5, 2010. On a positive note, their version of the Reauthorization is focused on raising the level of nutrition of school food, as well as increasing the number of children who are fed. The bill includes valuable improvements in policies that address the dual challenges of obesity and hunger, but unfortunately the financial aspect leaves much to be desired.

Far too many children across the U.S. are affected by these forms of malnutrition, and the increases in the reimbursements that schools receive for the meals they provide are minuscule. The Senate’s goal of making higher quality food more available to more kids is fantastic, except that they haven’t allotted adequate funding to do so. Pledging $4.5 billion over the next ten years, divided among more than 30 million students is only an increase of about 6 cents per meal. This simply is not enough to make the fundamental changes we need.

School nutrition programs are struggling to stretch their limited food budgets as it is. It’s already a challenge to produce healthy, balanced meals for students. The rise of food and labor costs makes it nearly impossible for schools to even maintain their current lunch programs, let alone make meaningful improvements to the food they serve.

Furthermore, kids need to have access to healthy food throughout the school day. Wholesome breakfast and lunch meals are indispensable, but we need to see healthier items in snacks lines, concession stands, and a trend towards healthy vending machines to make sure that they have access to the nutrition they need, whenever they need it. All of these upgrades require money!

Congress needs to pass a Reauthorization of the Child Nutrition Act that encompasses fundamental changes, with proper funding. The House of Representatives still has not passed their bill. This is our chance to call on the Administration to use this time before elections to drastically improve on this legislation. We have an obligation to ensure that healthy, quality meals are provided to children every day at school.

Voice your support for healthy school food – this means demanding higher nutritional standards and increased federal funding of school food programs. Contact your Congressional leaders to let them know that child nutrition is a priority!

Call the Capitol switchboard: 202-225-3121. The toll-free number is 866-277-7617.

The operator will ask you which elected official’s office you would like to be connected to. A staff member will answer your call and you can either leave your message with them, or ask them to be transferred to the staff member who handles child nutrition. If that staff member is out of the office, leave a message and try calling them back later.

If you don’t know who your Representative is, visit http://www.house.gov (the “Find Your Representative” tab is located in the upper-left corner).

Time is running out — make the most of this opportunity! We can’t afford to put this off for another 5 years.

Charm of Photojournalistic Wedding Photography

May 10, 2023· tags : · Comments Off

A wedding is the most auspicious and prosperous day in every bride’s life. She wants it to be perfect and memorable. This explains significance of quality wedding photography. If you are the lucky ‘bride to be’, going to tie a knot soon with your soul mate and looking to treasure every glorious instant of your wedding day, you need to hire the professional and artistic photographers solely dedicated to capture wedding special snapshots. Hiring such innovative professionals is a perfect idea as they are right personnel to capture your bridal blushes in magnificent manner. In advanced world, where art and technology are amalgamated together admirably, splendid photography ideas are introduced by wedding photographers to impress the brides and grooms.Photojournalistic wedding photography is an exclusive style of capturing wedding snapshots. This is different then general photography and it has become latest trend. In this type of photo taking process is used by the photographer. This process involves capturing every emotion of wedding. Hence, photojournalism wedding photography tells a story. Therefore, modern style wedding albums impress everyone. Hiring a photojournalistic wedding photographer has many advantages, which are mentioned below:• A photojournalistic wedding photographer offer candid photography throughout the wedding day. They make sure not to miss a single shot of your valuable emotions.
• In photojournalism wedding photography, main focus of photographer remains upon story-telling. This makes your wedding memories look livelier and more impressive.
• They save you from chaos and manipulation of structured photography. Arranged wedding snapshots are boring, time-taking and lack natural appeal.
• Photojournalistic technique of wedding photography is completely based upon aesthetic principles and this ensures gorgeous framing of every beautiful face present in wedding function.
• Photojournalists also offer special captures for bride and groom to make their wedding memories look glorious.
• They click all pictures in real time hence you need not to pose with relatives for hours, which is really tiring.
• They make sure not to miss even a single prosperous shot of your wedding day.In simple terms photojournalism wedding photography can be explained as style of clicking pictures like newspaper photographers do. They always click perfect and candid pictures, without rearranging the scene. This retains natural charm of a particular happening, which reflects from the photographs even after years. This is the reason behind increased demand of such style of photography in marriages. Though, it is a new approach but it is gaining high popularity day by day. Brides and grooms, who look for something exclusive and exceptional in their wedding, go for this style of photography.

Dental Marketing – Creative Strategies for More Patients

May 3, 2023· tags : , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , · Comments Off

Here are the not so common but very creative marketing strategies that you can utilize in your dental practice:1. Launch a referral program – It is and should be the number one strategy to use especially in healthcare related service as it is believed that 92% of people trust personal recommendations more than all other forms of marketing. It is simple but extremely powerful and has the potential to significantly increase new patient generation to your dental practice. I have listed some ideas on how you can kickstart this program:

Launch a Patient Loyalty Program – This is designed in a way where you would be able to collect email addresses & cell phone number for future marketing strategies like email marketing, social media campaign or mobile marketing. This is also letting your patients know that you are thankful for their business.

Launch a Patient Review Program – This is designed to increase your online reputation. You can selectively hand out cards to patients so they can leave reviews on your social networking sites or other websites like yelp, your Google business page or on your website so that they can claim their rewards.

Ask for a Patient Referral

Here is a 3 step guide on how to ask light-heartedly for a referral:

Selectively asking – ask only those who you know and who you like, an example is a long-term patient whom you have developed a good rapport.

When a patient has had a good experience – when a patient is being graceful in letting you know that they have had a great experience, you can tell them in a way that is not pressuring like, “It’s excellent to hear that you had a wonderful experience. When your friends or family tell you how bad their experience was, you can send them here.”

Use a script – Thank you for your feedback! I am very proud of our team and It is part of our goal to give a positive experience for patients like you who appreciate what we do. We know that not everyone has a positive experience like this with their dentists. If you have any family or friends who might enjoy the same experience you’ve had, we would love for you to recommend them to us.

2. Turn your product or service into a challenge – What problem do your services solve? Do not go with the flow of explaining the services that you offer. Instead, make your product the focal point and create a challenge for that. For example, you can ask patients dental related questions or even better is make a quiz on who they think is following good dental hygiene. It forces them to engage and your business will be unique and top of mind.3. Use popular hashtags on social media – Utilizing popular hash tags such as #FlashbackFriday or #ThrowbackThursday can increase the number of views you want for your business especially those that are in the millennial age group. You could also use this so that you could target person looking for a particular topic or service so you never know because it can also be a good source of how you can get new patients to check out your service.More Dental Marketing IdeasWhen it comes to dental marketing there’s no shortage of good ways to start. Here are a few more suggestions for marketing your dental practice. Take a look and see what you think will work for your practice.Get Local with SEOWhen people in your target area start searching online for a dentist do you show up? An easy way to check is to grab your phone, type in “Dentist near me” and see what comes up. If you’re not at the head of the pack you’re missing out on a lot of new patients and leads.A goal for your dental marketing efforts is to rank on local search, like when you typed “Dentist near me”, and get found by people in your target market.Leverage Existing PatientsIn addition to the above suggestions, working with what your dental practice already has, like existing patients, is an excellent place to start. For example in idea number one we discussed creating a patient loyalty program. Not only does this leverage existing patients, it’s good business that can (and will) drive referrals to your practice.Dental Marketing: It’s Not Rocket ScienceMarketing a dental practice can feel like rocket science, but it isn’t, using a little creativity and common sense can go a long way. Thinking about how to please your patients is one way to get more of them!To Social Media or Not to Social MediaIf you’re going to use Social Media to market you dental practice I recommend taking a moment to think about it.Social media is a great dental marketing tool but it requires time, effort and tact. Consistent effort and quality content are a must for social media to work for dental marketing. If you or your staff do not have the time to market your practice, the right way, on social media it may be best to look at other options. Other options for engaging social users are hiring an agency, training someone in your office to do it or using paid ads to reach social media users.Other ways to use social mediaAdditionally, when using paid ads to target new patients for your practice, be sure that you’re only targeting patients in your geographic area. If you’re in New York City you don’t want to be marketing to people in Los Angeles, right? It’s an easy and costly mistake to make.Make a contest and go viralUsing contests is a great way to grow your dental practice. Everyone wants whiter teeth, right? Create a grand prize, as an example, of teeth whitening for life (or whatever you want to offer).When your prize is something everyone wants you’ll have no trouble getting people to join your contest. Digital contests can boost your dental practices marketing exposure for pennies. Adding bonus actions to increase entrants chances to win is another way to squeeze a little more out of your contest.There’s a 1,001 ways to market your dental practice. Most of them you can do yourself. Sometimes, it’s better to hire an expert to do it right, the first time. You can learn more about hiring a dental marketing expert in the box below.

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