Screening for Food Insecurity

What is the best way to screen for food insecurity? The 18-item U.S. Food Security Scale (USFSS) is the gold standard, according to a recent editorial in the American Journal of Public Health. The tool was developed after five years of extensive testing, consultation, and expert review.  Its length, however, makes its use in most clinical settings impractical.

The first two questions in the USFSS, commonly known as the Hunger Vital Sign, ask how often within the past 12 months “we worried whether our food would run out before we got money to buy more,” and “the food we bought just didn’t last and we didn’t have money to get more.” Recent research has shown the Hunger Vital Sign to be both a sensitive and specific tool, and thus reliable is ascertaining whether a patient is food insecure, but only if the screener asks both questions and gives the patient 3 response options: “often true, sometimes true, or never true.”

Source: Children’s Health Watch, 11/2/17, Food Insecurity Screening