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Frequency of food insecurity and associated health outcomes in pediatric patients at a federally qualified health center

K. Bahadur, S. Pai, E. Thoby, A. Petrova
J Community Health

Food insecurity (FI) has been recognized as a public challenge not only for developing countries but also for the U.S. population: The present study was designed to identify the prevalence of FI and the association of household FI with the health status of pediatric patients seen at a Federally Qualified Health Center in New Jersey which provides health care mainly for Latino patients. Patients were included if they were screened for FI at their well visits during a 4-month period following implementation of the 2-item screening tool recommended by American Academy of Pediatrics. We compared demographic and morbidity data of children with FI to those living in food-secure households. The results are presented as the distribution of frequency (%) and odds ratios (OR) with 95% confidence interval (95% CI). FI was detected in 15.8% (95% CI 14.2-17.5%) of 486 studied children. We recorded higher rates of anemia (10.4 vs. 3.2%, p

Bahadur K, Pai S, Thoby E, Petrova A. Frequency of food insecurity and associated health outcomes in pediatric patients at a Federally Qualified Health Center. J Community Health. 2018;43(5):896-900. PMID: 29549567. DOI: 10.1007/s10900-018-0499-8.

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Publication year
Resource type
Peer Reviewed Research
Outcomes
Social Needs/ SDH
Health & Health Behaviors
Population
Children and Youth
Screening research
Yes
Social Determinant of Health
Food/Hunger
Study design
Other Study Design
Keywords