• Seth A Berkowitz, Deepak Palakshappa, Hilary K Seligman, and Janel Hanmer.
• Division of General Medicine and Clinical Epidemiology, Department of Medicine, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine, 5034 Old Clinic Bldg, CB 7110, Chapel Hill, NC, 27599, USA. seth_berkowitz@med.unc.edu.
• J Gen Intern Med. 2022 Nov 1; 37 (14): 363836443638-3644.

BackgroundCross-sectional studies have found that health-related quality of life and mental health are worse among food-insecure compared with food-secure individuals. However, how these outcomes change as food insecurity changes is unclear.ObjectiveTo evaluate how common patient-reported health-related quality of life and mental health scales change in response to changes in food security.DesignRetrospective cohort study using data representative of the civilian, adult, non-institutionalized population of the USA.ParticipantsFood insecure adults who completed the 2016-2017 Medical Expenditure Panel Survey.Main MeasuresMental health, as measured by the mental component score of the Veterans Rand 12-Item Health Survey (VR-12) (primary outcome), along physical health (physical component score of the VR-12), self-rated health status, psychological distress (Kessler 6), depressive symptoms (PHQ2), and the SF-6D measure of health utility. We fit linear regression models adjusted for baseline outcome level, age, gender, race/ethnicity, education, health insurance, and family size followed by predictive margins to estimate the change in outcome associated with a 1-point improvement in food security.Key ResultsA total of 1,390 food-insecure adults were included. A 1-point improvement in food security was associated with a 0.38 (95%CI 0.62 to 0.14)-point improvement in mental health, a 0.15 (95%CI 0.02 to 0.27)-point improvement in psychological distress, a 0.05 (95%CI 0.01 to 0.09)-point improvement in depressive symptoms, and a 0.003 (95%CI 0.000 to 0.007)-point improvement in health utility. Point estimates for physical health and self-rated health were in the direction of improvement, but were not statistically significant.ConclusionsImprovement in food insecurity was associated with improvement in several patient-reported outcomes. Further work should investigate whether similar changes are seen in food insecurity interventions, and the most useful scales for assessing changes in health-related quality of life and mental health in food insecurity interventions.© 2021. The Author(s) under exclusive licence to Society of General Internal Medicine.

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