Experts Call for Consistent Screening of Food Insecurity Among Adolescents

It is well established that adolescents experiencing food insecurity (inconsistent access to enough safe and affordable food to live an active, healthy life) are at greater risk of physical and mental problems. In aViewpoint article published yesterday in JAMA Pediatrics, Kaitlyn Harper, Ph.D., M.Sc., M.A., of Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Hilary Seligman, M.D., M.A.S., of the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), describe the need to integrate an accurate and reliable screening tool to assess food insecurity into clinical settings.“TheBiden-Harris national strategic plan emphasizes the importance of reaching populations that have been inadequately served by existing food and nutrition security programs and policies, ” they wrote. “Adolescents fall into this gap.”Harper is a postdoctoral fellow at Hopkins whose research is focused on improving food and nutrition security for children and adolescents in the United States through federal programs. Seligman is a professor of medicine, epidemiology, and biostatistics at UCSF and an expert in food insecurity and its health implications across the life course.In the article, Harper and Seligman described efforts to date to quantify adolescent food insecurity in the United States by surveying heads of households. The authors pointed out that these surveys likely underestimate the extent of the problem —as research shows caregivers’ responses and adolescents’ responses on food security ra...
Source: Psychiatr News - Category: Psychiatry Tags: adolescents depression food insecurity JAMA Pediatrics morbidity risky health behaviors screening viewpoint youth Source Type: research