An Arkansas hospital is working to make sure tens of thousands of kids have enough to eat.

ABOUT 1 IN 6 PEOPLE – and 1 in 4 children – in Arkansas struggled with food insecurity in 2016, helping to make it one of America's hungriest states.Count Sandra Reed and her two teenage children among them."It's hard to live day by day," Reed says. "You have to make sure you can pay bills, and you have to have transportation to get back and forth (to work). On top of that, my son's school, and his sister – I don't have any help, so it's been really hard."Though Reed works full time as a personal care aide and receives child support and disability benefits, she says those payments are inconsistent, so she often has to request overtime hours "just to try to make it." And she's caught in a gap that leaves millions of Americans hungry every year: She earns too much to qualify for federal aid from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, but doesn't make enough to ensure she can always put healthy food on the table.Arkansas Children's also became one of the first hospitals in the country to offer free meals through the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Summer Food Service Program, which gives sack lunches to low-income children during the summer months, typically through schools or other community organizations. Since August 2017, Arkansas Children's has served more than 27,000 meals.While most patients themselves have dietary restrictions and can't eat the sack lunches, "a lot of the families that come here bring the whole family, so there are other siblings who are hanging around, so they feed them," says Nancy Conley, communications director for the Arkansas Hunger Relief Alliance.