Association of a primary care-based mobile food pantry with child body mass index: A propensity score matched cohort study

Objective: To test the hypothesis that children in Food FARMacia—a six-month food insecurity intervention from May 2019 to January 2020—would have smaller age-adjusted, sex-specific body mass index (BMIz) gains than matched counterparts. Methods: In this proof-of-concept study, we performed a difference-in-differences (DiD) analysis of a propensity-score matched cohort among paediatric primary care patients aged <6 years with household food insecurity. Children with anthropometric measures prior to and after intervention started were included. The main outcome was child BMIz from standardized clinical anthropometric measurements. We examined differences in child BMIz change between Food FARMacia participants and matched non-participants. Results: Among 454 children with household food insecurity, 265 were included, 44 of whom were in Food FARMacia. Mean child age was 1.48 (SD 1.46) years and most reported Hispanic/Latino ethnicity (84.5%). After propensity score matching, children in Food FARMacia had smaller increases in BMIz (unadjusted DiD −0.28 [−0.52, −0.04]) compared to non-participants in the follow-up period. After adjusting for potential confounders, findings remained statistically significant [adjusted DiD, −0.31 units (95% CI: −0.54, −0.08)]. Conclusions: In this proof-of-concept cohort study of children in households with food insecurity, a paediatric primary care-based mobile food pantry program was associated with improvement in child BMIz over 6 months.