Qualitative Study Exploring Impacts Of Food Insecurity Among College Students

Food insecurity, or the inability to consistently obtain the amount of food or quality of food necessary for one to live a healthy lifestyle, remains a relevant and often unnoticed issue that college students face. The purpose of this study is to understand how the different dimensions of college students’ health are affected by food insecurity and to learn about what support or resources these students utilize and desire to help cope with their food situations. This study contains two components, including semi-structured interviews with the participants and a photovoice component. Through photovoice, participants take and submit photos that they feel represent how food insecurity impacts their health and their lives as college students. Analysis of the results focuses on detecting recurring themes of health effects derived from food insecurity as well as reported benefits and desires regarding resources intended for people, especially college students, facing food insecurity. Emerging themes consist of a lack of energy, missing out on wanted socialization, feeling the need to make unhealthy nutritional or health-related choices, and other health impacts. Patterns of a desire for a larger variety of food options and more advertising of resources available for food-insecure college students were also prominent.https://ir.library.illinoisstate.edu/urs2021hsc/1000/thumbnail.jp

Impact of food insecurity on the health and well-being of college students

Objective: To assess the impact of food insecurity on college student health and wellbeing. Participants: Sample of self-identified, food-insecure college students from a large midwestern university. Methods: a qualitative study utilizing interviews and photovoice measured the impacts of food insecurity. Results: Findings demonstrate that college students experience a large variety of negative health impacts among various dimensions of well-being because of food insecurity. Additionally, various barriers impact the effectiveness of university and community efforts to support food-insecure students. Conclusions: Future work addressing nutrition and food security on college campuses should focus on exploring effective policy-level and organizational-level interventions that decrease the occurrence of food insecurity among students, address each dimension of health affected by food insecurity, and decrease the occurrence of barriers that impact the effectiveness of university and community efforts