The Correlation Between Food Insecurity and Type 2 Diabetes Management at a Federally Qualified Health Center

Abstract

Type 2 diabetes is a complex, chronic disease that impacts over 34 million Americans. Effective long-term management through medications and lifestyle modifications can be complicated by social determinants of health. Food insecurity is correlated with poor diabetes management and is more prevalent in populations of low socioeconomic backgrounds. The Wesley Community and Health Centers (“Wesley”) is an FQHC that serves many diabetic patients but has not conducted any systematic food insecurity screenings before this year. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Wesley implemented a clinic-wide social determinants of health screening of their patients, including a validated 2-item food insecurity screening tool, the Hunger VitalSign™. This project was a retrospective chart review of diabetic patients at Wesley who were screened for food insecurity to determine if there are any correlations between food insecurity status, measured by the Hunger VitalSign™ responses, and glycemic control, measured by A1c levels. Correlation was analyzed by linear regression. The results demonstrated that this population had a similar prevalence of food insecurity as the population of Arizona. The linear regression analysis did not demonstrate any correlations between food insecurity status and A1c in this population, primarily because the final sample size did not reach sufficient statistical power. However, the results cannot rule out the possibility of any correlations, therefore further research is recommended to better characterize the true levels and impacts of food insecurity at Wesley.