Assessing food insecurity and related concepts: Moving beyond prevalence to understand the landscape of food security and inform policy initiatives
- Cooper, E., Hanson, E., Tidwell, A., Vandenberg, C., O’Neal, C. W., & Lucier-Greer, M. (2024). Assessing food insecurity and related concepts: Moving beyond prevalence to understand the landscape of food security and inform policy initiatives. Auburn, AL: Military REACH.
- Purpose This report is positioned to support the Office of the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Military Community and Family Policy (MC&FP) by providing a suite of measures for consideration regarding food security and related constructs (e.g., food access, food affordability). For surveillance purposes, versions of the United States Department of Agriculture’s Household Food Security Survey Module (HFSSM) (e.g., 6-item, 10-item, 18-item) tend to be the most widely used measures to survey the prevalence of household food insecurity (Carrillo-Álvarez et al., 2021). However, complementary assessments are needed to understand the full context of food insecurity, including barriers to and facilitators of food access and affordability, diet quality and diversity, and food literacy. Understanding the landscape of food security may better position policymakers to holistically address food- and nutrition-related needs among Service members and their families. Section 1 provides background information and conceptual foundations for understanding food security. The four pillars framework (FAO, 2006) describes food availability, accessibility, utilization, and stability as the central “pillars” or components of food security; yet, a review of the literature suggests that 3 of the pillars (i.e., availability, utilization, and stability) are not commonly systematically measured in research. For example, the widely used HFSSM focuses only on food access. The Food Security Continuum (Hendriks, 2015) also provides a holistic perspective on conceptualizing food security over time and identifies factors that buffer or amplify food insecurity. Key terms from these frameworks and the food security literature are systematically identified and defined in this section. These terms, then, provide a guide to identifying relevant measures. Section 2 identifies and reviews 26 measures related to the food security landscape that may be useful in a military context. The included measures are self-report assessments, closed-ended, developed with English-speaking adult populations, and assess constructs directly related to food security.
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Research summaries convey terminology used by the scientists who authored the original research article; some terminology may not align with the federal government's mandated language for certain constructs.