The war on childhood hunger. In Boston. In 2016.
Dr. Deborah A. Frank met Duvon Haughton when he was 10 months old, rushed to Boston Medical Center with an infection. The baby weighed a scant 14 pounds, roughly the weight expected for a 3-month-old.
“He was lying on the bed, floppy-looking,” recalled Frank, founder and director of the hospital’s Grow Clinic. The youngest of six children in a struggling immigrant family, Duvon did not have enough to eat at home.
The Grow Clinic provided food, supplies, medical help, social workers, and Duvon’s first toy, a truck — typical treatment at the largest clinic in a network established in 1984 by the state Legislature to address childhood malnutrition.
