By Claire White, MS, CHES, Health Promotion Coordinator – Healthcare Partnerships
Experiencing food insecurity can cause an individual to feel trapped in a never-ending cycle of deciding between paying for services, like healthcare, or paying to put a nutritious meal on the table for their family. The longer an individual stays stuck in this cycle, the higher the risk of experiencing long-lasting impacts that can affect them for the rest of their lives, including increased medical care costs, risk for chronic and mental health conditions, and a higher likelihood of medication nonadherence. It has become increasingly important to identify and treat patients and families who are experiencing food insecurity, and you can be a crucial step toward this goal.
Identifying patients and families experiencing food insecurity can be done using the Hunger Vital Sign™ at your practice. This is a validated screening tool that was created by the Children’s HealthWatch to assess individuals as being at risk for food insecurity. This tool prompts patients to consider their experiences within the past twelve months and respond either “often true”, “sometimes true”, or “never true” to the statements “We (I) worried whether our food would run out before we (I) got money to buy more” and “The food we (I) bought just didn’t last and we (I) didn’t have the money to get more”. A response of “often true” or “sometimes true” means the patient screened positive for experiencing food insecurity, and you want to ask them if they would like to be connected to supportive food resources (e.g., food pantries, school meal programs, nutrition education classes, etc.). It is also important during this process to document the results of your patient’s responses to track the needs of your community—which could potentially lead to grant funding and increased program resources. This screening tool can be used by healthcare professionals, emergency food assistance programs, patient advocates, and social workers in both pediatric and adult populations.
Food insecurity can impact anyone, at any time, and you can’t tell someone is experiencing it just by looking at them. So, it is important to ensure that screening for this need is done systematically. This will help to reduce the ongoing stigma that surrounds social needs and will allow the patient to experience holistic health care. Click on this link for a list of prompts to introduce screening to your patients.
If you would like further information on how to begin systematically screening and intervening for food insecurity at your location, please fill out the Contact Us form or watch the Ways to Implement Food Insecurity Screenings video listed under the Resources – Training tab on the Health and Hunger Task Force of Central Florida’s website.
