RWU Stay Break Part II: Advocating for the State’s Food Insecure Residents

Students apply their hands-on lessons in food insecurity issues to make an advocacy pitch to state legislators

Medically unexplained symptoms and attachment theory: The BodyMind Approach

© 2019 Payne and Brooks. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.This article discusses how The BodyMind Approach ® (TBMA) addresses insecure attachment styles in medically unexplained symptoms (MUS). Insecure attachment styles are associated with adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and MUS (Adshead and Guthrie, 2015) and affect sufferers' capacity to self-manage. The article goes on to make a new hypothesis to account for TBMA's effectiveness (Payne and Brooks, 2017), that is, it addresses insecure attachment styles, which may be present in some MUS sufferers, leading to their capacity to self-manage. Three insecure attachment styles (dismissive, pre-occupied and fearful) associated with MUS are discussed. TBMA is described and explanations provided of how TBMA has been specifically designed to support people's insecure attachment styles. Three key concepts to support insecure attachment styles involved in the content of TBMA are identified and debated: (a) emotional regulation; (b) safety; and (c) bodymindfulness. There is a rationale for the design of TBMA as opposed to psychological interventions for this population. The programme's structure, facilitation and content, takes account of the three insecure attachment styles above. Examples of how TBMA works with their specific characteristics are presented. TBMA has been tested and found to be effective during delivery in the United Kingdom National Health Service (NHS). Improved self-management has potential to reduce costs for the NHS and in General Practitioner time and resources.Peer reviewe

The Economic Cost of Domestic Hunger: Estimated Annual Burden to the United States

Examines the extent of domestic hunger and estimates the cost burden of food insecurity to the nation, including the costs of charity to help feed families, mental health and physical illnesses, and impaired educational outcomes and economic productivity

A competing risk model for health and food insecurity in the West Bank

This paper explores the interactions between the risk of food insecurity and the decision to health insure in the Palestinian Territories. The risk of adverse health conditions is insurable; the risk of food insecurity is a background risk and no market insurance exists. The vulnerability to food insecurity influences the individual utility from health insuring. We present a competing risk model to reveal this interdependence. We specify the empirical model as a bivariate probit model and evaluate the impact of food insecurity on the household decision to health insure. We find evidence of significant complementarity between the risk of food insecurity and the propensity to health insure. The predicted conditional probabilities reveal that the propensity to health insure is higher in presence of food insecurity among Palestinian households. This study shows that, in presence of a background risk, there are complementarities among risks that policy should be mindful of

Playing an Insecure Hand

For a growing number of families and workers in Western New York, low-wage work is the only—or the last—employment option. In 2009, one out of four jobs in the region were in occupations where the median annual wage fell below the poverty line for a family of four. This rising reliance on low-wage work is a discouraging change from the post-war economic boom when incomes and standards of living soared—a period that continues to shape our employment and lifestyle expectations. Actions by an array of individuals and groups—unbound by ideology—are essential for alleviating regional economic insecurity

No. 05: The HIV and Urban Food Security Nexus

Considerable attention has been devoted to the impact of the HIV and AIDS epidemic on small farmers and the food security of the rural poor. Despite the rapid progression of the epidemic in rural areas, it remains an ever-growing challenge in the continent’s rapidly-growing cities where prevalence rates are still higher than in rural areas. This report examines the reciprocal relationship between HIV and urban food security. Much of the research and most of the policy interventions on the HIV-Urban Food Security Nexus focus on the nutritional status of individual People Living With HIV (PLHIV). Other members of households with PLHIV also experience an increase in food insecurity as household purchasing power declines and nutritional needs increase. Urban food insecurity is a complex phenomenon and nutritional research and interventions on the vicious circle of HIV and nutrition need to be reframed within a broader socio-economic perspective that encompasses all of the various aspects of urban food security

Map the Meal Gap 2016: Highlights of Findings for Overall and Child Food Insecurity

In order to address the problem of hunger, we must first understand it. Feeding America undertook the Map the Meal Gap project to learn more about hunger at the local community level. By understanding the population in need, communities can better identify strategies for reaching the people who most need food assistance.At Feeding America, our mission is to feed America's hungry through a nationwide network of member food banks and engage our country in the fight to end hunger. Although we seek to meet the needs of food insecure individuals and families, it is not always easy to identify the need for food within each of our communities. But what is food insecurity and how do we understand the research around it? Traditionally, Feeding America has used state and national level USDA food insecurity data to estimate the need (e.g. "42 million Americans are at risk of hunger"), but food banks are rooted in their local communities and need better information at the ground level in order to be responsive to their unique local conditions.Until now, the number of people falling below the federal poverty threshold has been the indicator most typically used for identifying the need for food at the local level because it is one of the few indicators available at the county level. However, national food insecurity data reveal that about 57% of those struggling with hunger actually have incomes above the federal poverty level and 60% of poor households are food secure. Thus, measuring need based on local poverty rates alone provides an incomplete illustration of the potential need for food assistance within our communities. More accurate assessments of need across all income levels within our service areas can assist Feeding America and our network of food banks in strategic planning for charitable food services that best support Americans facing hunger, as well as inform the public policy discussion so that vital federal nutrition programs can better serve those in need. Most importantly, better community-level data can serve as an important resource for engaging community leaders and partners in the journey from aspiration (ending hunger) to achievement through a quantifiable and data-driven approach

The changing landscape of youth and young adulthood

No abstract available