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

Abstract

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.