Healthcare and non-healthcare costs: youth with diabetes and food insecurity.

Introduction: This study prospectively evaluated the association of household food insecurity and acute care costs and productivity loss in youth and young adults (YYA) with type 1 and type 2 diabetes.

Methods: This observational cohort study included 1,256 YYA with type 1 and type 2 diabetes from the SEARCH for Diabetes in Youth Food Security Study with data collected at three time points between 2015-2022. Both household food insecurity (HFI, measured using the US Household Food Security Survey Module) and costs (measured using survey responses on utilization and productivity losses) were self-reported by young adult participants or caregivers of adolescents.

Mental distress and resource insecurity in the Kingdom of Tonga following the 2022 volcanic eruption: Associations of water and food insecurity with mental distress.

Background: Water and food insecurity can harm mental health; all three may in turn be exacerbated by humanitarian crises. The linkages between food insecurity, water insecurity, and mental health are gaining attention but have not been investigated after a natural disaster.

Objective: To investigate the associations between food insecurity, water insecurity and mental distress, and how these relationships may differ between women and men, in the aftermath of the 15 January 2022 volcanic eruption in the Kingdom of Tonga.

Diet Quality and Weight Status are Predicted by Federal Nutrition Assistance Program Participation, Health, and Demographics.

Background: Programs, such as Medicaid, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, and the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), provide access to vital medical and nutrition services. Few studies have investigated whether demographic, social, and economic determinants of health, including length of time spent on these programs, are associated with diet quality and weight status in early childhood.

Objectives: Classification and regression tree analysis, a machine learning method, was used to determine health predictors to identify patterns of children with higher compared with lower diet quality and higher compared with lower weight status.

Impact of Food Insecurity Resource Navigation for Primary Care Patients with Diabetes and Hypertension: A Matched Cohort Study.

Background: Food insecurity contributes to poor health and increased healthcare costs among patients with chronic diseases. Resource navigators can facilitate community-based resource connections, addressing food insecurity, but the impact on healthcare costs and quality of life remains unclear.

Objective: To examine whether food insecurity resource navigation improves clinical outcomes, healthcare charges, and quality of life for patients with diabetes and/or hypertension.

Community and School Programs, Policies and Environments Related to Child Dietary Intake:The Healthy Communities Study.

Background: To reverse the epidemic of unhealthy eating and related chronic disease in the United States, intervening early in life is essential.

Objective: Identify features of community- and school-based programmes, policies and environments related to child intake of fruits and vegetables (FV) and sugar-sweetened beverages (SSB).

Methods: Dietary intake of children 4-15 years old (n = 5138) from elementary and middle schools in 130 US communities was collected by survey (of parent and/or child) in 2013-2015.

The Water Insecurity Experiences (WISE) Scales are suitable for use in high-income settings: findings from cognitive interviews and nationally representative surveys.

Background: The Water Insecurity Experiences Scales are validated tools for reliably and comparably assessing experiences with water access and use in low- and middle-income countries. Although theoretically applicable in high-income countries, their performance in these settings has not been assessed. This study therefore examined whether the Water Insecurity Experiences Scales function similarly in high-income countries, and if they generated measures comparable to those in low- and middle-income countries.

Monitoring Nutrition Security: Perspectives from a Workshop on Nutrition Security Measurement.

Nutrition security, an emerging concept distinct from and complementary to food security, has gained increasing interest as a focus of efforts to reduce hunger, improve nutrition, and prevent diet-related health conditions. Yet, unlike food security, which has well-established measures, nutrition security lacks standardized measures for assessment. This gap hinders the ability to evaluate progress in improving nutrition security both in the United States and globally.

Perspective: Growth Monitoring and Promotion as an Opportunity to Improve Early Childhood Development.

Growth monitoring and promotion (GMP) visits provide a frequent contact point with caregivers, which can be an opportunity for the promotion of early child development (ECD). Using a combination of quantitative analyses of longitudinal and cross-sectional data and a review of the literature, we investigated whether the GMP platform could improve ECD by identifying children at risk of poor development and delivering responsive parenting education to caregivers of young children. Cross-sectional and lagged regression analyses and area under the receiver operating characteristic curves indicated that growth indices were not accurate predictors of concurrent and later child development.

Lived experiences of farmworkers from five U. S. states during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Objective: The nexus of farmworker and COVID-19 peer-reviewed research has yet to be advanced by qualitative analysis that: (1) focuses on multiple dimensions of farmworker's daily life and (2) uses a geographically diverse sample. The present data collection project fills this gap by using the National Center for Farmworker Health's (NCFH) Farmworker COVID-19 Community Assessment (FCCA) Phase 2 dataset which contains a varied sample of farmworkers and local experts across selected counties in five states. The NCFH FCCA Phase 2 data were analyzed to characterize how farmworkers from a multistate sample experienced COVID-19 impact their daily lives, with particular focus on understanding farmworker vaccine experiences, familial dynamics, and actions implemented by employers.

What, when, and how food and beverage are advertised on Ghanian television.

Food marketing has increased volume, precision, and reach to influence viewers' food attitudes, beliefs, and eating behaviors. What and how much people eat has implications for health. While many countries regulate food advertising to protect consumers and encourage healthy eating, Ghana has none.

Prevalence and predictors of intimate partner violence against men in Kisumu slums, Kenya.

Background: Men in sub-Saharan Africa experience intimate partner violence, with few reporting their cases to the legal authorities or coming out for assistance. Consequently, data on the prevalence and drivers of intimate partner violence in different parts of sub-Saharan Africa are inadequate. Therefore, this study was designed to investigate the prevalence and predictors of intimate partner violence against men in Kisumu slums, Kenya.

Accuracy of Using Weight and Length in Children under 24 mo to Screen for Early Childhood Obesity: A Systematic Review.

The global increase in early childhood overweight and obesity has prompted interest in early prediction of overweight and obesity to allow timely intervention and prevent lifelong consequences. A systematic review was conducted to assess the accuracy and feasibility of predicting overweight and obesity in individual children aged 3-7 y using data available in healthcare and community settings on children aged under 24 mo. This review was registered in PROSPERO (CRD42024509603) and followed the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses guidelines.

Effect of a climate-smart intervention on agriculture and nutrition of people with HIV.

Objective: To evaluate impacts of Shamba Maisha , a climate-smart agriculture intervention, on agricultural and nutrition outcomes of people with HIV.

Design: Secondary analysis of a parallel, nonblinded cluster-randomized controlled trial.

Setting: Western Kenya.

Narrative Review of the Validity and Cross-Context Equivalence of Healthy Diet Metrics and Their Data Collection Methods for Global Monitoring.

Background: Valid, sensitive healthy diet metrics that are comparable across contexts are needed for global monitoring. The healthy diets monitoring initiative identified 4 field metrics as potentially fit for purpose: global diet quality score (GDQS), global dietary recommendations score, minimum dietary diversity for women (MDD-W), and Nova ultra-processed food score.

Objectives: To review whether these 4 healthy diet metrics ) accurately predict food and nutrient intakes; ) accurately differentiate the average or prevalence of food and nutrient intakes; ) respond to changes over time; ) are comparable across contexts; and ) can be collected using their proposed brief assessment methods while preserving predictive accuracy.

Incremental financial costs of strengthening large-scale child nutrition programs in Bangladesh, Ethiopia, and Vietnam: retrospective expenditure analysis.

Background: Inattention to young child growth and development in a transitioning global environment can undermine the foundation of human capital and future progress. Diets that provide adequate energy and nutrients are critical for children's physical and cognitive development from 6 to 23.9 months of age and beyond.

Research Priorities for Drivers of Food Choice for Food System Transformation in South Asia: Proceedings of a Collaborative Workshop.

Agrifood systems in South Asia are highly productive, but substantial challenges including poverty, climate change, and environmental degradation complicate progress toward achieving sustainable healthy diets for all. The dynamics of food systems and the consequence of their rapid transformation for food choice behaviors that contribute to healthy and unhealthy diets are not well understood. Food choice is defined as a decision-making process through which individuals and households consider, acquire, prepare, distribute, and consume foods and beverages.

Expenditures on Strengthening Large Scale Breastfeeding Counseling Programs in Bangladesh, Ethiopia, and Vietnam.

Timely support given to breastfeeding mothers can result in life-saving benefits for both mothers and infants. Progress in achieving results from existing efforts to improve breastfeeding practices can be accelerated with adequate investments in effective interventions. We aimed to document expenditures incurred by three diverse programs in Bangladesh, Ethiopia, and Vietnam that demonstrated improved breastfeeding outcomes.

Quality Assurance and Quality Improvement in Maternal, Infant, Young Child and Adolescent Nutrition Service Provision in Five Countries.

Greater efforts are needed to better integrate nutrition services focused on the first 1000 days into health systems. Key constraints to large-scale impact include the scale of coverage, intensity and quality of nutrition services. But there is little understanding to date on what quality comprises in the context of maternal, infant, young child and adolescent nutrition (MIYCAN) services.

Evidence-Based Lessons From Two Decades of Implementation Research on Complementary Feeding Programmes.

Child nutrition has serious long-term development implications. Evidence-based frameworks and models are urgently needed to reduce deficits in infants and young children's diets on a large scale. Our paper reviews 32 publications and five impact evaluations of programmes in Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Nepal, Nigeria and Vietnam to identify what worked and why; the quality of evidence, diversity of countries and multi-level interventions on a large scale were selection criteria.

Adoption or Placement in Foster Care and Catch-up in Linear Growth and Development: A Meta-Analysis of Individual Participant Data.

The ability of children to recover from linear growth retardation, often referred to as catch-up growth, has intrigued researchers for many decades. Whether adoption from a low-income to a high-income setting, which provides a comprehensive improvement in the conditions that cause children to not grow well, leads to catch-up growth is unknown. We estimated the association of adoption (or placement in foster care) with catch-up in linear growth and child development before 5 y of age.

Assessment of Four Essential Features of the Alive & Thrive Initiative to Improve Maternal, Infant, Young Child, and Adolescent Nutrition.

Alive & Thrive has been a major global nutrition initiative that aimed to learn how to improve maternal, infant, young child, and adolescent nutrition and health on a large scale. During 2009-2014, Alive & Thrive developed and implemented interventions to improve infant and young child feeding at scale in three countries. Subsequently, Alive & Thrive expanded its work to more than 15 geographies, including six country-specific and two regional programs, to additionally address maternal and adolescent nutrition while adding agriculture and social protection programs to improve maternal, infant, and young child nutrition.

Similarities in socioeconomic disparities and inequalities in women's nutritional status and health care in Bangladesh, Ethiopia, India, and Nigeria.

Background: Reducing inequalities in women's nutrition and health care can accelerate progress towards Sustainable Development Goals for maternal and child health. Nutrition interventions for women are delivered through maternal health services such as antenatal care and institutional deliveries, but whether they reach and protect the disadvantaged against malnutrition is not well documented.

Objective: To assess the similarities in socioeconomic disparities and inequalities in the nutritional status and health care of women.

Perspective: Can Growth Monitoring and Promotion Accurately Diagnose or Screen for Inadequate Growth of Individual Children? A Critical Review of the Epidemiologic Foundations.

Growth monitoring and promotion (GMP), the process of periodic anthropometric measurements to assess the adequacy of individual child growth, is implemented across low-income and middle-income countries. The epidemiologic foundations of GMP (i.e.

Brief Report: Internalized Poverty-Related Stigma and Interpersonal Violence Among Women Living With HIV in the United States.

Background: Interpersonal violence (IPV) affects half of women living with HIV (WLHIV) in the United States and has important consequences for mental health and HIV outcomes. Although different types of stigmas (eg, HIV- or sexual identity-related) are associated with increased risk of IPV, the relationship between poverty-related stigma and IPV is unclear, even though poverty frequently co-occurs with IPV.

Methods: Data from up to 4 annual visits (2016-2020) were collected from 374 WLHIV enrolled in a substudy of the Women's Interagency HIV Study (now known as Multicenter AIDS Cohort Study/Women's Interagency HIV Study Combined Cohort Study) at 4 sites across the United States.

Integrated child nutrition, parenting, and health intervention in rural Liberia: A mixed-methods feasibility study.

In Liberia, children are exposed to multiple forms of adversity which can negatively impact their health and development. Research is needed to examine the feasibility and benefits of integrated interventions that can be incorporated into existing health delivery programs to simultaneously address low responsive stimulation, undernutrition, and infection. This study assessed the feasibility of an integrated intervention promoting psychosocial stimulation and improved child feeding by the provision of eggs and fish.