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Hunger

the Northeast to statistics the physical effects of rural and urban longer, says Brown. The group has also hold public hearings across New England.

The five doctors will be accompanied by a PSS film crew, who will incorporate the trip into a large documentary on hunger in America. "We hope to focus attention on the problem in a way that is credible." explains Brown.

Dr. Eli C. Newberger one of the five physicians making the trip, says that he jumped at the chance to work with Brown.

"He's a fabulous leader and thinker who now faces the fairly daunting and prevalent issue of hunger," adds Newberger.

"Brown says his commission has discovered that hunger is on the rise, citing the commission's study of a Massachusetts group of impoverished children which showed that approximately 10 percent were malnourished.

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The commission is an outgrowth of the School of Public Health's Improvement Program (CHIP), which Brown has directed since 1978.

The program

CHIP has to extensive vefasry program that includes Beth graduate and undergraduate students who can who can received could credit for their work. The students work for more than 50 community organizations, assisting them on public health issues in placks throughout metropolitan Boston, including Brown's own neighborhood in Mission Hill.

"Brown is an inspiration," say Angels Saifon, a Tufts University senior interning at CHIP. "He is always positive--he seems to be able to handle the world."

Brown began his formal work with hanger in 1969, when he founded the Task Force on Children out of School, a group which studied children excluded from the Boston school system like the handicapped and emotionally disturbed.

The task force drew attention to the subject and helped bring about the admission of handicapped children into the public school system, says Newberger.

In 1973, the task force became the Massachusetts Advocacy Center, which monitors the state government's actions in child education, welfare, and health.

Brown anlved as on School of public Health in 1978.

In addition to teaching one course there, he has become busy with Oxfam during the last three years.

"I'm crazy about Oxfam because it helps people help themselves," says Brown. He adds, "It's help from the bottom up, not from the top down,"

"He is extremely well-known and respected in the Washington community and has been a tremendous help there," says Oxfam's Executive Director of Policy Analysis Larry R. Simmon.

Brown says that some of Oxfam's resources should be spent educating Americans on the problems of hunger, and in helping them "understand the disparities between North and South."

But Brown emphasizes that the hunger problem persists at home also. "There is no excuse for high starvation in a nation that has more food than people can eat," he says.

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