The Center is an outgrowth of the Harvard-based Physician Task Force on Hunger in America which, during the 1980s, made field visits across the U.S. and released studies on the extent and causes of hunger, leading to Congressional resolve to address the growing problem at that time. The leader of the Harvard initiative, Dr. J. Larry Brown, created the Center as a vehicle to address not only hunger, but its cause - growing poverty and income inequality in America. In July 2000, the Center relocated from Tufts University to Brandeis University.

For many years, the Center's programs were carried out through the Asset Development Institute and the Food Security Institute and through a series of special projects.The Asset Development Institute was established to promote and advance asset development as a domestic policy framework. The Food Security Institute was established to help state and local organizations use food security surveys to assess hunger and food insecurity prevalence, serve as a national clearinghouse for hunger and food insecurity studies, and work with policy makers and the media to promote greater understanding of hunger and food insecurity in America, and their relationship to federal and state policies and programs.

In late 2004, following a broader re-organization of research centers within the Heller School for Social Policy and Management, Brandeis University, the Asset Development Institute became the newly-established Institute on Assets and Social Policy (IASP). During the reorganization, the activities of the former Food Security Institute were absorbed within the work of the Center.

The Center on Hunger and Poverty is now a research center within the IASP, and focuses solely on the following issues pertaining to food security and hunger:

• Domestic hunger, including its dimensions, its health and nutritional consequences, and policy responses over time.
• Hunger and food insecurity prevalence at the national, state, and local levels.
• Promotion and expansion of the child nutrition and food stamp programs.
• Development of nutrition education materials specifically designed for low-income families with children.
• Program design and evaluation for innovative community initiatives in the hunger/nutrition field.

Highlights of Center work over recent past years include:

Hunger Relief Act. This national legislation, originally sponsored by Senators Edward Kennedy and Arlen Specter, improves food stamp benefit allotments for families with children with high shelter costs and enables working families to receive food stamps and still keep their automobile by sheltering the value of the car. The Center helped initiate and draft this important piece of legislation.

National Food Security Scale. Prepared for the USDA in collaboration with other institutions, the scale provides an annual measure of the extent of hunger and food insecurity in the United States, and is reported annually like the federal poverty index.

Welfare Devolution Scale. This first national study on welfare reform in each state documents that, contrary to the promises of welfare devolution, most states have put into place policies that will make poor households poorer.

Statement on Key Welfare Reform Issues. This project reviews research showing that the central premises behind the stated reasons for welfare reform are not supported by the empirical evidence.

Nutrition-Cognition Initiative. This multi-year effort informs policy makers, educators and the press about an emerging body of scientific evidence linking mild hunger, the type most prevalent in the U.S., with permanent impairments in cognitive function in children. More than 300,000 copies of the Center's Statement about this evidence have been requested.

Two Americas: Child Poverty in the U.S. This series of analyses shows a two-decade upward trend in child poverty, with the problem growing most rapidly among whites and in suburbs of the nation.

Mickey Leland Childhood Hunger Relief Act. National legislation created and sponsored by the Center and sister organizations to strengthen federal food and nutrition programs.

Congressional Analysis: 30 Million Hungry Americans. A 1993 analysis requested by the House Select Committee on Hunger indicates that the number of hungry people in the nation had risen since a Harvard-based group estimated 20 million suffered from hunger in 1985.

The Medford Declaration to End Hunger in the U.S. This collaborative initiative with other national hunger organizations mobilized the leaders of over 3,000 organizations, representing more than 100 million members, to push for ending hunger and reducing poverty in the nation.