Is participation in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program associated with physical food security among people aged 16 to 64 with disabilities in the U.S.?

Background: The nation's largest nutrition assistance program (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP)) was designed to improve economic food security. People with disabilities may experience interactions of functional limitations with environmental conditions that limit access to food, regardless of income level or nutrition assistance receipt.

Objective: Test whether participation in SNAP is associated with physical food security (PFS), a new measure that quantifies the extent that individual physical functioning limitations such as limitations in lifting or walking reduce access to food.

Methods: Using data from the 2013-2018 National Health and Nutrition Survey (NHANES), we estimate the proportion of people aged 16 to 64 with disabilities in the U.S. who experience low or very low PFS and use logit regressions to test whether participation in SNAP is associated with level of PFS for working-age people with disabilities.

Results: In testing a variety of fully adjusted logit regression models of PFS, including models that included interaction terms of disability and SNAP receipt and models that used alternative specifications of disability, we did not find evidence that SNAP receipt was associated with or served as a moderator of PFS for people with disabilities.

Conclusions: These findings highlight the importance of collaboration among disability, food, and nutrition policy and practice to identify home and community-based ways to improve PFS.