There was no shortage of evidence in Dr. Nancy Hardt’s PowerPoint slides, showing communities must invest in early childhood care and education to avoid paying more in the future.
About 115 students, staff, faculty and community members gathered at 6 p.m. Tuesday in the Pugh Hall Ocora for “The Price of Poverty’s Impact on Women and Children” presentation, hosted by the Bob Graham Center for Public Service.
Hardt, a UF College of Medicine professor of pathology and obstetrics and gynecology, was the keynote speaker. She invests her time in the community working as the director of the Health Disparities and Service Learning Programs and as the associate director of the Family Data Center.
Gainesville is one of the top U.S. cities with high income disparities, she said in her presentation, and it’s not due to a lack of resources.
“We’re doing something different here, and it’s not a good something,” Hardt said.
Hardt said she believes there is a lack of investment in early childhood care and education, and that’s where the work should start.
Abby Doupnik, a 20-year-old UF journalism junior, said Hardt’s research opened her eyes to depths of the poverty problem.
“I knew that there were issues,” Doupnik said, “but the data from her research helped to show how much of an issue that there is.”
[A version of this story ran on page 5 on 2/4/2015 under the headline “Professor talks about poverty’s effect on health"]
