Food Security in Relation to Diabetes Management and Assessment of Food Security Status in Children with Diabetes Mellitus

Public Deposited
Analytics

Downloadable Content

Download PDF
Request Version for Screen Reader
Last Modified
  • June 15, 2020
Creator
  • Noe, Violet
    • Affiliation: Gillings School of Global Public Health, Department of Nutrition
Abstract
  • Food insecurity (FI) and diabetes are common in youth in the United States. FI has been consistently associated with poorer glycemic control and poorer diet quality among adults with diabetes, but there is limited research on these associations in children. Furthermore, the Household Food Security Survey Module (HFSSM), the most commonly used tool to assess FI, has been shown to be an adequate measure of FI at both the population and the individual level, but little to no research exists on the use of this survey tool in pediatric patients with diabetes. This study aimed to investigate FI in relationship to hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c) and diet quality as well as the use of the HFSSM to measure household FI of children with diabetes. Participants were youth ages 7-19 recruited from the University of North Carolina Hospitals’ Pediatric Endocrinology clinic (N=30, mean age 13.9, mean HbA1c 9.0%). Data were collected through an electronic questionnaire and through individual interviews. HbA1c was collected from the medical record. No significant differences were found between FI status and HbA1c or diet quality. Interviews were conducted using a semi-structured interview guide and discussions were audio-taped, transcribed, and analyzed using standard inductive qualitative methods. Interview data indicated that parents from food insecure households made efforts to shield their children from the effects of FI by reducing or altering their own food intake and indicated that parents had worry or anxiety about and prior difficulty with FI negatively impacting their child’s diabetes management. Interpretation of some of the questions of the HFSSM also differed between parents from food insecure households and parents from food secure households. Given the small sample size of this study, more research is needed in the future to test associations between FI status and diabetes management and diet quality in children as well as investigate the use of the HFSSM to measure household FI of children with diabetes.
Date of publication
Keyword
DOI
Resource type
Rights statement
  • In Copyright
Advisor
  • Mayer-Davis, Elizabeth
Degree
  • Bachelor of Science in Public Health
Academic concentration
  • Nutrition
Honors level
  • Honors
Degree granting institution
  • University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Graduation year
  • 2018
Language
  • English

Relations

Parents:

This work has no parents.

Items

Thumbnail Title Date Uploaded Visibility Actions
file details 2018_Noe.pdf 2020-06-15 Public Download