Food Insecurity among Adolescent Students from 95 Countries Is Associated with Diet, Behavior, and Health, and Associations Differ by Student Age and Sex.

Background: Adolescents' developmental tasks and challenges vary based on age, sex, and social context. Food insecurity affects adolescents, but existing research has been limited to a few country contexts and has treated adolescence as a singular developmental moment with limited consideration of potential differences in how food insecurity relates to developmental experiences based on adolescent age and sex. Objectives: We aimed to describe relations between student-reported food insecurity and students' profiles of nutritional, physical activity, school absenteeism, health/mental health, and victimization experiences, and how these differ by student age and sex. Methods: Using cross-sectional data from the Global School-based Student Health Survey, we examined adolescent reports of their food security among 337,738 students 11-18 y old from 95 countries. We identified their profiles of focal experiences, and used mixed-effects linear and logistic regression models to examine differences in these profiles by student food insecurity and how these differ by student age and sex. Results: Of students, 25.5% aged 11-14 y compared with 30% aged 15-18 y reported food insecurity in the past 30 d. Food insecurity was associated with less frequent fruit and vegetable intake; more frequent soft drink intake; worse mental health; less physical activity; more missed school; higher odds of smoking, drinking, and using drugs; and more bullying victimization and sexual partners. Food insecurity was associated with reduced age- and sex-specific protection: greater substance use among younger adolescents, more sexual partners among older females, and greater worry among younger males. Food insecurity was also associated with increased age-specific risk: greater soft drink consumption among younger adolescents. Conclusions: Across countries, adolescent food insecurity was associated with poorer nutritional, mental health, behavioral, and relationship profiles; these associations differed with student age and sex. Food insecurity interventions should attend to adolescent developmental stage and the gendered contexts through which adolescents navigate daily life.

Child experience of food insecurity is associated with child diet and physical activity.

BACKGROUND: Food insecurity is associated with deficits in child development and health, but little is known about how children's specific food-insecurity experiences play out through nutritional and non-nutritional pathways that may compromise well-being. OBJECTIVE: This study used child self-reports of food insecurity to examine the types of food-insecurity experiences that were most prevalent and the relations between child food insecurity (CFI), child diet, and child physical activity (PA). METHODS: A total of 3605 fourth- and fifth-grade children whose schools participated in the Network for a Healthy California-Children's PowerPlay! campaign completed 24-h diary-assisted recalls and surveys including items from the Child Food Security Assessment and questions about PA. Data were analyzed by using regression and logistic regression models. RESULTS: CFI was present in 60% of the children and included experiences of cognitive, emotional, and physical awareness of food insecurity. Greater levels of CFI were associated with higher consumption of energy, fat, sugar, and fiber and a diet lower in vegetables. For instance, a child at the highest level of CFI, on average, consumed ∼494 kJ/d (118 kcal), 8 g/d of sugar, and 4 g/d of fat more than a food-secure child. Higher CFI was associated with a marginally significant difference (P = 0.06) in minutes of PA (17 min/d less for children at the highest level of CFI vs. those who were food secure) and with significantly greater perceived barriers to PA. CONCLUSIONS: CFI is a troublingly frequent, multidomain experience that influences children's well-being through both nutritional (dietary) and non-nutritional (e.g., PA) pathways. CFI may lead to poor-quality diet and less PA and their developmental consequences. Practitioners should consider CFI when assessing child health and well-being and can do so by asking children directly about their CFI experiences.

Children are aware of food insecurity and take responsibility for managing food resources.

Child food insecurity is measured using parental reports of children's experiences based on an adult-generated conceptualization. Research on other child experiences (e.g. pain, exposure to domestic violence) cautions that children generally best report their own experiences, and parents' reports of children's experiences may lack adequate validity and impede effective intervention. Because this may be true of child food insecurity, we conducted semistructured interviews with mothers, children (age 9-16 y), and other household adults in 26 South Carolina families at risk for food insecurity. Interview transcripts were analyzed using a constant comparative process combining a priori with inductive coding. Child interviews revealed experiences of food insecurity distinct from parent experiences and from parent reports of children's experiences. Children experienced cognitive, emotional, and physical awareness of food insecurity. Children took responsibility for managing food resources through participation in parental strategies, initiation of their own strategies, and generation of resources to provide food for the family. Adults were not always aware of children's experiences. Where adult experiences of food insecurity are conditioned on inadequate money for food, child experiences were grounded in the immediate household social and food environment: quality of child/parent interactions, parent affect and behavior, and types and quantities of foods made available for children to eat. The new, child-derived understanding of what children experience that results from this study provides a critical basis from which to build effective approaches to identify, assess, and respond to children suffering from food insecurity.

Poverty, race, and the contexts of achievement: Examining educational experiences of children in the U.S. south.

This article considers issues of educational inequality in the U.S. South from a social work/ social justice perspective. After a review of existing literature and discussion of cultural versus structural explanations for race and socioeconomic status gaps in academic achievement, findings are presented from a study examining child-, classroom-, and school-level factors that influence academic achievement among public school children in the South. Although a sizeable minority of southern children attend schools that are segregated along racial and socioeconomic lines, and although these schools are different in various aspects of educational environment, once family structure, parental characteristics, the use of ability grouping, and rural school location were taken into account, no influence of race on achievement remained. Implications for social work policy and practice are discussed.

"It's just not all teenage moms": diversity, support, and relationship in family services.

Social support is often used in family services, implicitly or explicitly, as a tool for enhancing family functioning. Using data from a focus group study, this article explores aspects of the relationships parents develop through participation in a family support program. Program structures and processes shaping relationships are also considered. Findings are then interpreted through a social capital theoretical lens, and implications for practice are discussed.