Harvard School of Dental Medicine, 188 Longwood Ave, REB503, Boston, MA 02115, USA.
Am J Public Health. 2012 Nov;102(11):e50-5. doi: 10.2105/AJPH.2012.300971. Epub 2012 Sep 20.
We examined long-term patterns of household food insecurity in children from kindergarten through eighth grade and the association between those patterns and children's proxy-reported health status in eighth grade.
We obtained data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten Cohort, a study that followed a nationally representative sample of students from kindergarten entry in 1998-1999 through eighth grade. We classified food insecurity according to the number of years of reported household food insecurity over 4 observation years. We estimated logistic regression models to estimate the association between cumulative food insecurity exposure and health outcomes.
Food insecurity was generally a transient rather than a persistent condition. Persistent food insecurity over the 9-year period was associated with lower health status in eighth grade, whereas more transient food insecurity was not significantly associated with health outcomes in most models.
Single-year estimates substantially underestimate the share of children whose households experienced food insecurity at some point during their childhood years. Persistent food insecurity is an important public health issue for children. Policy interventions to alleviate children's persistent food insecurity may promote child health.
我们研究了从幼儿园到八年级儿童家庭食物不安全状况的长期模式，以及这些模式与八年级儿童代理报告的健康状况之间的关系。
我们从儿童纵向研究-幼儿园队列中获取数据，该研究对 1998-1999 年幼儿园入学的全国代表性学生样本进行了跟踪调查，直到八年级。我们根据报告的家庭食物不安全的年数，将食物不安全状况分类。我们估计了逻辑回归模型，以估计累积食物不安全暴露与健康结果之间的关联。
食物不安全通常是一种短暂的情况，而不是持久的状况。在 9 年期间持续的食物不安全与八年级时较低的健康状况有关，而在大多数模型中，更短暂的食物不安全与健康结果没有显著关联。
单一年份的估计大大低估了在儿童成长过程中有一段时间家庭经历食物不安全的儿童的比例。持续的食物不安全是儿童的一个重要公共卫生问题。减轻儿童持续食物不安全的政策干预措施可能会促进儿童健康。
