Kansans to travel to Washington, D.C. to advocate for nutrition programs

WICHITA, Kan. (KWCH) Kansans Skyler Mangers and Traci Poore will join heart disease and stroke patients, survivors, caregivers, health care providers and other advocates from across the country in Washington, D.C., this week to ask their elected representatives to support nutrition and food security programs in the 2023 farm bill. They are part of You’re the Cure, the national grassroots network of the American Heart Association.

Mangers and Poore, along with other volunteers, will urge Congress to support diet quality and environmental sustainability in the 2023 farm bill, including improving diet quality in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), a key component of the bill.

Mangers, a Wichita native, is a 24-year-old social work student at the University of Kansas. They have hyper-adrenergic POTS (postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome). The symptoms can be comparable to patients with congestive heart failure. Mangers has other disorders and diagnoses that require care from multiple specialists.

The other advocate from Kansas, Traci Poore, has served as a member of the Kansas Advocacy Committee for two years. She is a healthcare attorney providing services to clients throughout the Midwest. Poore’s husband is a rural primary care physician and their youngest child, Maizy was born with a congenital heart defect (CHD) and had open heart surgery at just 9 days old.

Poore has been involved in the legislative push for adding pulse oximetry to the newborn screening process in Kansas and is a passionate supporter of early detection and access to quality healthcare.

Essential anti-hunger and nutrition programs are projected to constitute more than four-fifths of the full cost of the legislation, including SNAP, the Gus Schumacher Nutrition Incentives Program and others.