A participatory research project to understand food insecurity among African American children during the summer

One in three African American children live in food insecure households. Food insecurity is associated with negative health and educational outcomes. Households with children are particularly vulnerable to food insecurity during the summer. The purpose of this study is to have caregivers identify and prioritize the factors that affect summer food insecurity among African American children and determine differences between rural and urban communities.  Researchers used concept mapping to collect and prioritize data from African American caregivers of school-aged children at risk of food insecurity in the summer. Participants were recruited from community-based organizations in urban and rural areas of Missouri. Thirty-eight caregivers participated in the brainstorming phase and 14 caregivers participated in the sorting and rating phase of the concept mapping process.  Concept maps based on aggregate sorting and rating results reflected factors across all ecological levels as well as factors associated with general household resources and summer specific household resources. Both urban and rural participants rated the government food assistance cluster as highly important to whether kids have enough food to eat during the summer; however, differences between urban and rural caregivers were also noted. Urban caregivers prioritized “food consumption and cost” as most important while rural caregivers prioritized “community food assistance resources and access to healthy options” as most important. The differences between urban and rural caregivers’ perceptions suggest that place matters. Programmatic and policy interventions to address summer food insecurity among African American children must be adapted to the social and economic context of a community.