Determining pathways from food insecurity to parent and child well-being

粮食不安全（FI），即缺乏持续的粮食供应，是一种影响600多万人的公共卫生危机。 美国的孩子每年。FI预测儿童发展各个领域的适应不良结果， 长期的生命和健康后果，但我们不知道如何以及为什么FI带来负面影响。到 建立有效的公共卫生措施来解决FI，我们必须了解它是如何破坏的， 发展，并确定哪些方面的金融服务可能是敏感的干预。FI增加父母的心理 健康问题、压力和严厉的父母教养方式可能会导致FI的有害影响 儿童福利，但有关该协会的机械细节是不确定的。假设FI工作 主要是通过父母影响儿童，但由于衡量和方法的局限性， 目前的研究，这一途径尚不清楚。父母的抑郁症可能会限制父母的安全能力， 食物导致FI，或者FI直接影响孩子的行为，这导致父母情绪的变化 和行为。分离出这些模式中的哪一种正在发生，或者哪一种正在为谁和何时发生，将 告知哪些家庭和社区成员是粮食援助计划的目标。此外，时间 在这一过程中，FI与父母和孩子的福祉之间的关系并没有得到仔细的研究。 表征了FI只在很长一段时间内进行了检查，比如几年，所以我们不知道有多快 负面影响显现。了解FI如何在较短的时间内工作，例如几周和几天，以及 如果时间进程因FI类型而异，将使我们能够了解经常遇到间隙的方式 在粮食援助方面对儿童影响是真实的。计划中的研究将采用创新的方法来研究 FI与父母和儿童福祉之间的关系，提出结果，以制定公共卫生 针对最有希望的解决方案的干预措施。本建议书所述的培训计划将 为我提供压力生理学和生物标志物的基础知识，以及方法论 和定量技术，以解决以下有关金融机构与 父母和孩子的幸福感：1）FI与父母和孩子之间的关系的方向性是什么 幸福吗（2）效应出现和维持的时间尺度如何？在拟议的研究中，我将利用 新的概念，方法和统计培训，以解决这些理解上的差距，使用 人内方法，每天重复测量FI和父母和孩子的福祉。此外，培训 在应激生理学将准备我探索，在未来，如何FI的生理效应有助于 家庭补助对父母和子女福利影响。这个博士后奖学金将为我提供进一步的培训， 作为一个独立的研究者，我的职业生涯是在这些领域展开的。此外，该提案的结果 将有助于塑造这一转化科学对数百万儿童的高度重大公共卫生威胁， 短期和长期的健康和发展。

Food insecurity (FI), the lack of consistent access to food, is a public health crisis that affects over 6 million children in the US each year. FI predicts maladaptive outcomes in every domain of child development with long-lasting life and health consequences, but we do not know how and why FI carries negative effects. To establish effective public health initiatives to address FI, we must understand how it works to undermine development, and identify which aspects of FI may be sensitive to intervention. FI increases parental mental health problems, stress, and harsh parenting practices in a way that likely contributes to FI’s detrimental effects on child well-being, but mechanistic details about the association are uncertain. It is assumed that FI works primarily through parents to influence children, but due to measurement and methodological limitations of current research, that pathway is unclear. It is possible that parental depression limits parents’ ability to secure food in ways that lead to FI, or that FI affects child behavior directly, which leads to changes in parent mood and behavior. Isolating which of these patterns is occurring, or which is occurring for whom and when, will inform which members of the family and community to target for food assistance programs. Further, the time course over which the relationship between FI and parent and child well-being operates has not been carefully characterized. FI has only been examined over long time periods, like years, so we do not know how quickly negative effects emerge. Understanding how FI works across shorter timelines, such as weeks and days, and if that time course varies by FI type, will allow us to understand the ways in which frequently experienced gaps in food assistance impact children in real time. The planned research will apply innovative methods to study the relationship between FI and parent and child well-being, presenting results to craft public health interventions that target the most promising set of solutions. The training plan described in this proposal will provide me with foundational knowledge in stress physiology and biomarkers, as well as the methodological and quantitative techniques necessary to address the following key questions about the link between FI and parent and child well-being: 1) What is the directionality of the relationships between FI and parent and child well-being? and 2) Over what time scale do effects emerge and sustain? In the proposed study, I will leverage new conceptual, methodological, and statistical training to address these gaps in understanding, using a within-person approach with daily repeated measures of FI and parent and child well-being. In addition, training in stress physiology will prepare me to explore, in the future, how physiological effects of FI contribute to the impact of FI on parent and child well-being. This post-doctoral fellowship will provide me further training in domains necessary for launching my career as an independent researcher. Further, the results of this proposal will help shape this translational science on a highly significant public health threat to millions of children’s immediate and longer-term health and development.