Adolescent food insecurity: the special case of Marshallese youth in north-west Arkansas, USA.

Abstract

Food insecurity is not randomly dispersed throughout the population; rather, there are a number of risk and protective factors shaping both the prevalence and severity of food insecurity across households and sociodemographic populations. The present study examines some of these factors and the role that race and ethnicity among adolescent individuals in north-west Arkansas might play, paying specific attention to a subgroup of Pacific Islanders: the Marshallese. The study uses cross-sectional survey data collected from a self-administered questionnaire of 10th-12th grade students. A city in north-west Arkansas, USA. The number of enrolled students in the selected high school at the time of the survey was 2148. Ten classrooms (116 students) were unable to participate at the time of the survey, making 2032 students eligible to be surveyed. Approximately 22% refused to participate and 105 students were absent from school, yielding a response rate of approximately 78% (n 1493). Marshallese students had a higher prevalence of food insecurity than all other racial and ethnic groups in the study. After controlling for other sociodemographic, risk and protective factors, their odds of food insecurity remained significantly higher than both non-Hispanic White and Hispanic or Latinx students. Adolescent food insecurity among Marshallese students must be made sense of in relation to structural-level determinants that shape the distribution of vital resources such as food across racial, ethnic and foreign-born lines.