 |
The 130th Annual Meeting of APHA |
|
The 130th Annual Meeting of APHA |
Cheryl Oberholser, MS and Cynthia Reeves Tuttle, BS, MPH, PhD. Department of Nutrition and Food Science, University of Maryland, 3304 Marie Mount Hall, College Park, MD 20742, (717) 805-7150, coberholser@hotmail.com
This study identified the food security status of households with children receiving Food Stamp benefits in the state of Maryland. The United States Food Security Survey Module was implemented as part of a telephone survey. Subjects were selected from a random sample listing of Maryland Food Stamp recipients who spoke English and had at least one child. The final sample consisted of 245 households. This study population received Food Stamp benefits for an average of nine months and 65% experienced some degree of food insecurity. Thirty-seven percent of the households experienced food insecurity without hunger and 28% experienced food insecurity with hunger. Thirty-four percent of the households were also enrolled on the Supplemental Food Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC) and 18% used a food bank within the past year. Food insecure households reported “not enough money for food” as the primary reason why they didn’t always have “enough to eat” or “the kinds of food they wanted”. The prevalence of food insecurity, both with and without hunger reported in our study, is considerably higher than the prevalence reported for all households in the 1996 National Food Stamp Program Survey, 22% and 28% respectively. These results indicate that a gap continues to exist between the supplemental Food Stamp support provided and the nutritional needs of these low-income families with children in Maryland.
Learning Objectives:
Keywords: Food Security,
Presenting author's disclosure statement:
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.