UW graduate student presents Hunger in Wyoming workshops across the state
UW graduate student, Julie Hampton-Lyon, is giving the issue of food security a springboard in the midst of legislative pressure. Hampton-Lyon, a master’s student in The Department of Family and Consumer Sciences’ Food Science and Human Nutrition program is spearheading six events statewide along with the Food Bank of Wyoming that focus on delivering information to communities about WY food policy.
The Hunger in Wyoming (HIWY) workshops started in Laramie, Sheridan, and Gilette and will continue through Jackson, Evanston, and Lander/Riverton. Hampton-Lyon says, “Engaging with legislators who can directly influence our state policy gives us an opportunity to voice our lived experiences to create systems that work for us.”
For Hampton-Lyon, one of the biggest triggers for launching this project was the discontinuation of the SNAP Ed funding, a branch of the state’s SNAP program that was impacted by federal policy changes. SNAP Ed was the nutrition education branch of SNAP that was defunded by the One Big Beautiful Bill, starting in October 2025.
The workshops were launched after Hampton-Lyon secured a $2000 starter grant from Research!America for civic engagement in WY communities. After the success of the initial launch, an additional $15,000 was later secured by the Food Bank of Wyoming through a MAZON grant.
While Hampton-Lyon acts as the chief facilitator and vanguard of HIWY, she also credits her partnerships with fellow graduate student, Denyse Ute, faculty mentor, Dr. Grace Shearrer, and Kali McCrackin Goodenough, Food Security Policy Advocate for the Food Bank of Wyoming. “I love the people that I work with—we are all dedicated to making Wyoming food secure.”
Participants from the Hunger In Wyoming (HIWY) workshop in Laramie, gather for the
first of six state events covering food policy in the state.
The workshops are a chance for Wyomingites with lived experience, community organizations, researchers, policy stakeholders, and legislators to come together for constructive conversations around hunger and how stakeholders can collaborate to create a more food-secure Wyoming.
From a research standpoint, HIWY investigates how Wyoming communities are currently contributing to food security and sustainability efforts in the state through focused and open dialogue. The roughly five-hour sessions contain a panel discussion, a networking luncheon, and a group brainstorming session with a Q&A.
The panels of experts change from location to location, consisting of local/regional food security leaders, University of Wyoming research experts, child nutrition experts, regional representation from the Food Bank of Wyoming and the Wyoming Hunger Initiative, and state legislators.
The workshops give legislators the opportunity to actively engage with their fellow community members with the aim of coming together to better understand the current food needs and what legislators or communities can do to improve food security and food systems in their areas.
Information from these sessions identify research questions and/or increase opportunities for community based participatory research focused on food systems and food security in Wyoming.
Hampton-Lyon has used this experience to further her own academic research having developed HIWY’s SWOT analysis, designing topics for individual events, and cultivating a deeper understanding of what issues people face in the different communities.
HIWY is currently inviting food security partners, food producers, community members and policymakers from the southwest corner of Wyoming to join the Evanston event on July 29, 2026.
For more information about HIWY, contact Hampton-Lyon at jlyon5@uwyo.edu.
The University of Wyoming has earned its Research Level 1 (R1) status from the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education, placing Wyoming's only four-year university with the top research universities in the United States.