Household Food Insecurity and Hunger Among School-Aged African Immigrant

Food insecurity in African immigrant households is a public health issue that profoundly affects school-going children. Food insecurity is characterized as the consistent inability to obtain adequate and affordable food for oneself. School-aged African immigrant children are at substantial premised vulnerability because of the multiple forms of disadvantage, including economic, cultural, and resource constraints. All these policies and practices complicate the process of acquiring sufficient quality food required for speedy growth among children besides meeting their mental and emotional needs. Eradicating this problem fits well with the health promotion aims especially the Leading Health Indicators (LHI) of Healthy People 2030, which targets to decrease household food insecurity. This paper focuses on food insecurity issues in the context of African immigrants’ households and discusses possible ways to encourage the improvement of their health.

Relating the Problem

The critical health issue of food insecurity among school-age African immigrants has considerable implications for this vulnerable population. The target population of African immigrant families often faces challenges related to socio-economic disadvantage, cultural barriers, and inaccessibility to health and social services. These may include the inability to access affordable and nutritious foods because of language, low economic status, and lack of familiarity with local food systems. Food insecurity in this context is regarded as limited or uncertain availability of nutritionally adequate and safe foods or limited or uncertain ability to acquire acceptable foods in socially acceptable ways (Onyango et al., 2023). Food insecurity has broad-ranging implications for children’s general physical and developmental health. The vulnerability of school-aged children is high because it affects their ability to concentrate at school, their performance, and their growth; thus, it may have both short- and long-term health repercussions.

Statistics show that immigrant households, especially African immigrants, have greater levels of food insecurity than native-born populations. About 18.5% of immigrant households experience food insecurity, as compared with 11.1% of native-born households. This overrepresents African immigrants many times because of added stressors in language barriers, underemployment, and inaccessibility to social safety nets (Lane et al., 2019). These statistics are what give meaning to the topic because, while food insecurity affects an individual in health terms, it also reflects deep systemic inequities. Living in a food-insecure household has made children more susceptible to complications such as malnutrition, obesity, developmental delays, and mental health problems like anxiety and depression.

Consequently, this project focuses on and aligns with the Healthy People 2030 initiative, specifically the goal of Healthy People Objectives: Reduce food insecurity and hunger. Healthy People’s Objectives aim at reducing household food insecurity and the percentage of children who are hungry (Pronk et al., 2020). African immigrant families are brought to the crossroads of multiple social determinants of health, such as economic instability, access to education, and social support systems that exacerbate food insecurity; this project addresses these very determinants it directly associates with the Healthy People goal related to improving nutrition and improving food access.

Health Promotion Concepts

Food insecurity health promotion should be holistic and sensitive to the culture of African immigrant families. The effective strategy should emphasize increasing access to healthy, affordable, accessible, and culturally appropriate food through integrating food assistance programs with culturally competent outreach and education. Programs like SNAP and WIC have had great success in reducing food insecurity. Participation in those programs from immigrant groups has remained low due to the presence of a language barrier, lack of awareness, and immigration status fears (Durao et al., 2020). Health promotion, therefore, should be carried out by raising awareness, increasing the level of enrollment into those programs, offering language support, and assuring that no repercussions occur regarding one’s immigration status.

Other important areas of health promotion include nutrition education and healthy eating. Nutrition education programs, culturally adapted, would assist African immigrant families in making active food choices that would appeal to their cultural tastes and meet nutritional needs. These programs should focus on teaching the family how to navigate the local food systems, where to find healthy, affordable food, how to prepare nutritious meals with limited resources, and how to maximize any available food assistance programs (Durao et al., 2020). Besides individual-level interventions, community-level initiatives are entirely fundamental for ensuring long-term food security. It is in community gardens, farmers’ markets, and food cooperatives that food deserts could be addressed, and where fresh, healthy, and culturally relevant food would most likely be found by African immigrant families.

Summary of the Articles

A literature review on food insecurity and health among African immigrant populations creates an important understanding of the problem. Onyango et al. (2023) considered the relationship between food insecurity and dietary deprivation in an African immigrant household. This study illustrates that food insecurity among immigrant populations is economic, social, and cultural in nature; these elements include but are not limited to, a lack of job opportunities, discriminatory behaviours, and a general lack of access to culturally appropriate foods. All these factors add up to poor dietary intake and extremely poor health outcomes such as malnutrition and diseases that are chronic. The study calls for an integrated approach to dealing with food insecurity and goes beyond the question of providing access to more food by putting into perspective the social and economic challenges that immigrant populations face. Hence, the authors recommend food justice and equity policies to make food nutritious and culturally appropriate to everybody, irrespective of background.

In another article, Flaubert et al. (2021) discuss wide social determinants of health and how these determinants affect health equity. He argues that food insecurity is among the major social determinants of health, which mostly affects those on the lowest rungs of the economic ladder, like African immigrants. Further, they point out that solutions for food insecurity involve an approach to multi-sectoral root causes of the problem, of which poverty and inequality remain part. In this study, structural racism is identified as contributing to food insecurity and other health disparities. Some immigrant families often experience systematic exclusions based on their colour or origin in Africa, resulting in loans to access healthcare, education, or employment, all of which go hand in hand with food security. The authors suggest that more measures tailored to eliminate these detrimental pervasive features should be enacted, including measures that enhance affordable housing, quality education, and health care, as well as inclusive living wage opportunities.

The third article by Pronk et al. (2020) aimed at discussing the Healthy People 2030 platform and its identification of the key determinants of health for a population approach. According to the authors, food insecurity is an issue of public health concern and must be solved if the vision of Healthy People 2030 is to be realized. They point out that food insecurity means not just the lack of food but also the type of product that is offered. Thus, having little access to socioeconomic means, African immigrant families are left consuming low-quality and high-calorie food, which, although cheap, does not meet the portion’s nutritional value. The study concludes by calling for more collaboration between healthcare providers, community organizations, and government agencies in ensuring food security for all Public Health initiatives. The authors argue that healthcare providers can play a key role: Screening families for food insecurity and hooking them up with food assistance programs and nutrition education services can be provided as part of healthcare.

Conclusively, household food insecurity among school-aged African immigrant children is an important and pressing public health problem. The effects of this issue are strongly linked with other factors that influence health, such as poverty, education, and shelter, which affect Immigrants. Food insecurity consequently demands a culturally competent solution that also properly considers factors faced by African immigrant families. Such initiatives mean that Healthy People initiatives must look for ways to improve individual and population levels of access to healthy, affordable, and culturally appropriate foods and condiments and give attention to structural factors that influence the risks for HFA. Fortunately, these concerns can be discussed utilizing the Healthy People 2030, recognizing that it is crucial to involve healthcare professionals and community and government institutions more.

References

Durao, S., Visser, M. E., Ramokolo, V., Oliveira, J. M., Schmidt, B.-M., Balakrishna, Y., Brand, A., Kristjansson, E., & Schoonees, A. (2020). Community-level interventions for improving access to food in low- and middle-income countries. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, 8. https://doi.org/10.1002/14651858.cd011504.pub3

Flaubert, J. L., Menestrel, S. L., Williams, D. R., & Wakefield, M. K. (2021). Social Determinants of Health and Health Equity. In www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov. National Academies Press (US). https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK573923/

Lane, G., Nisbet, C., & Vatanparast, H. (2019). Food Insecurity and Nutritional Risk among Canadian Newcomer Children in Saskatchewan. Nutrients, 11(8), 1744. https://doi.org/10.3390/nu11081744

Onyango, E. O., Crush, J. S., & Owuor, S. (2023). Food insecurity and dietary deprivation: Migrant households in Nairobi, Kenya. Nutrients, 15(5), 1215. https://doi.org/10.3390/nu15051215

Pronk, N., Kleinman, D. V., Goekler, S. F., Ochiai, E., Blakey, C., & Brewer, K. H. (2020). Promoting Health and Well-being in Healthy People 2030. Journal of Public Health Management and Practice, Publish Ahead of Print(1). https://doi.org/10.1097/phh.0000000000001254

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Purpose 

• This assignment allows the learner to apply knowledge gained about health promotion concepts and strategies, enhance written communication skills, and demonstrate a beginning understanding of cultural competency.

Preparing the assignment

Household Food Insecurity and Hunger Among School-Aged African Immigrant

Follow these guidelines when completing this assignment.

1. Identify a health problem or need for health promotion for a particular stage in the life span of a population from a specific culture in your area.(Household Food Insecurity and Hunger Among School -Aged African Immigrant)
2. Choose one of the Leading Health Indicator (LHI) priorities from Healthy People. https://health.gov/healthypeople/objectives-and-data/leading-health-indicators
3. Research a topic related to health and wellness associated with one of the Healthy People topic areas. 
4. MUST Include the following sections for full points :
   1. Introduction and Conclusion-
      • Introduction establishes the purpose of the paper and describes why the topic is important to health promotion in the target population in your area.
      • Introduction stimulates the reader’s interest.
      • Conclusion includes the main ideas from the body of the paper
      • Conclusion includes the major support points from the body of the paper.
   2. Relate Topic to Target Population;
      • Describe the topic and target cultural population
      • Include statistics to support significance of the topic.
      • Explain how the project relates to the selected Healthy People topic area.
      • Apply Health promotion concepts.
   3. Summary of the Article
      • A minimum of three scholarly article, from last five years, are used as a sources.
      • Article meet criteria of being from scholarly journals and include health promotion and wellness content.
      • At least on the article is related to chosen cultural group.
      • Summaries of all the key points and findings from the articles.
   4. APA Style and Organization
      • 4-6 pages, excluding title and reference pages.
      • Use APA
      • format and is free from errors.
      • Turnitin is used prior to submitting paper for grading.