Urban food insecurity

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Publication Type dissertation
School or College School of Medicine
Department Family & Preventive Medicine
Author Meacham, Aaron Terry
Title Urban food insecurity
Date 2014-12
Description Trends indicate more and more people are moving from rural to urban areas. While urban areas provide benefits such as better access to healthcare, education, and employment, they also pose challenges for households to obtain adequate food. This dissertation seeks to evaluate the impact of urban agriculture on food insecurity, dietary diversity, and nutritional status. Additionally, since the role of wealth plays a significant part in determining a household's access to food, an analysis was conducted on positive deviant households to explore determinants of households that had greater food security despite being in the bottom two quartiles of a wealth index. Data from 5-year-old children living in urban areas of Peru were used. Linear regression models were used to explore the association of urban agriculture on food security, dietary diversity, and nutritional status (height-for-age Z-score and weight-forage Z-score). Linear regression models were also used to explore determinants of food security, dietary diversity, and nutritional status among poor Peruvian families in the bottom two quartiles of a wealth index. Logistic regression models were used to explore what factors contributed to being a "positive deviant" household, or a household in the bottom two wealth quartiles that reported being food secure, or food insecure without hunger. Urban agriculture appears to have some potential to improve household and child food security for families living in urban areas of Peru. Households with greater household iv size showed significantly worse food security indicators and may be in need of targeted food assistance. Donated food's significant, negative association with food security is likely a marker for those children who had already been identified with need for, and were receiving, food supplementation. Additional research is needed to identify ways to improve household dietary diversity. Urban agriculture was not associated with better nutritional status indicators, but better socioeconomic status and maternal education were positively associated and highly correlated. While urban agriculture may represent one possible strategy for coping with food insecurity, its contribution should not be over-emphasized in the context of urban environments in Peru. Among households in the bottom two quartiles of wealth, increasing wealth of urban residents was shown to help to mitigate food insecurity. Urban agriculture appears to be employed to help mitigate the negative impacts of food insecurity. Maternal education was also highly correlated with lower food insecurity scores. Efforts to improve a household's socioeconomic status and increase educational opportunities for girls should be considered by policy makers.
Type Text
Publisher University of Utah
Subject MESH Food Supply; Hunger; Family Characteristics; Population Dynamics; Population Surveillance; Urban Population; Child; Adolescent; Nutritional Status; Socioeconomic Factors; Educational Status; Health Status Disparities; Poverty Areas; Peru; Public Health Practice
Dissertation Institution University of Utah
Dissertation Name Doctor of Philosophy
Language eng
Relation is Version of Digital reproduction of Urban Food Insecurity
Rights Management Copyright © Aaron Terry Meacham 2014
Format Medium application/pdf
Format Extent 197,718 bytes
Source Original in Marriott Library Special Collections
ARK ark:/87278/s66t521t
Setname ir_etd
ID 1422291
Reference URL https://collections.lib.utah.edu/ark:/87278/s66t521t
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