Food Insecurity in the United States

At AAA 2023+HearTECH Expo, April 19–22, Professor Bamini Gopinath, PhD, reported that older adults with food insecurity had a greater likelihood of having both pure-tone hearing loss and self-perceived hearing difficulties. Dr. Gopinath used data collected from individuals living in the Blue Mountains of Australia. As a result of this finding, you may be wondering about food insecurity in the United States.

This April, Weeks, Mykyta, and Madans (2023) released an article examining the relationship between selected sociodemographic factors and food insecurity reported by adults living in the United States. These authors used data from the 2021 National Health Interview Survey.

The data revealed that almost six percent of individuals aged 18 years or older lived with families that experienced food insecurity in the 30 days prior to data collection. The percentage of adults who experienced food insecurity differed significantly based on sex, age, race and Hispanic origin, disability status, family composition, and level of urbanization of their area of residence. Readers are referred to the full article to see how these the percentage of food insecurity varied by these sociodemographic factors.

Findings indicate that food insecurity is experienced by many individuals and families in the United States, and while this has implications on many aspects of health, it can also be a contributing factor for hearing loss.

References

Gopinath B. (2023) Association between food insecurity and hearing loss in older adults. AAA 2023+HearTECH Expo, Seattle, WA.

Weeks J, Mykyta L, Madans JH. (2023) Adults living in families experiencing food insecurity in the past 30 days: United States, 2021. NCHS Data Brief, no 465. Hyattsville, MD: National Center for Health Statistics. DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.15620/cdc:125707.