• Am J Prev Med · Jul 2024

    Social Isolation, Loneliness, and Quality of Life among Food-Insecure Adults.

    • Sungchul Park and Seth A Berkowitz.
    • Department of Health Policy and Management, College of Health Science, Korea University, Seoul, Republic of Korea; L-HOPE Program for Community-Based Total Learning Health Systems, Korea University, Seoul, Republic of Korea. Electronic address: sungchul_park@korea.ac.kr.
    • Am J Prev Med. 2024 Jul 1; 67 (1): 120123120-123.

    IntroductionFood insecurity is associated with adverse health outcomes, but may also have a detrimental effect on social relationships, potentially exacerbating social isolation and loneliness, and consequently affecting health-related quality of life. This study examined the associations of food insecurity with social isolation, loneliness, and health-related quality of life among U.S. adults.MethodsA retrospective cohort study was conducted using panel data from the 2020-2021 Medical Expenditure Panel Survey. Regression models were used to assess the associations of food insecurity in 1 year with the outcomes of interest in the subsequent year while adjusting for baseline individual-level characteristics. Analysis was conducted in December 2023.ResultsExperiencing food insecurity in 2020 was significantly associated with increased reports of social isolation (3.1 percentage points [95% CI: 1.2-5.1]) and loneliness (9.7 percentage points [95% CI: 1.0-18.3]) in 2021. Additionally, food insecurity in 2020 was significantly associated with lower self-reported good mental health (-2.9 percentage points [95% CI: -5.1, -0.6]) and mental component summary score from the Short Form-12 Health Survey (-3.3 points [95% CI -3.8, -2.9]) in 2021. However, there were no or small associations with physical health-related quality of life.ConclusionsFood insecurity is associated with worse social and mental well-being among U.S. adults. This suggests that food insecurity interventions should not focus too narrowly on nutrition, but instead give holistic consideration to the multiple ways food insecurity harms health-not only via lower quality diets, but through worse mental health and impairing the ability to participate in social life.Copyright © 2024 American Journal of Preventive Medicine. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

      Pubmed     Copy Citation     Plaintext  

      Add institutional full text...

    Notes

     
    Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?
    300 characters remaining
    help        
    You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
    • Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as *italics*, _underline_ or **bold**.
    • Superscript can be denoted by <sup>text</sup> and subscript <sub>text</sub>.
    • Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines 1. 2. 3., hyphens - or asterisks *.
    • Links can be included with: [my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com)
    • Images can be included with: ![alt text](https://bestmedicaljournal.com/study_graph.jpg "Image Title Text")
    • For footnotes use [^1](This is a footnote.) inline.
    • Or use an inline reference [^1] to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document [^1]: This is a long footnote..

    hide…