Analyzing Food Insecurity and Health Outcomes in Kansas City

This report addresses food insecurity as a critical social determinant of health in Kansas City, where one in six individuals, including a significant number of children, face food insecurity. This issue is linked to various adverse health outcomes, such as heart disease, diabetes, and depression, leading to...Read More

Running head: SHD: FOOD INSECURITY IN KANSAS CITY 1
SHD: Food Insecurity in Kansas City
Name
Institutional Affiliation

SHD: FOOD INSECURITY IN KANSAS CITY 2
SDH: Food Insecurity in Kansas City
Social Determinant of Health: Food Insecurity in Kansas City
Food insecurity is the chosen social determinant of health in Kansas City which has
produced risks and outcomes. One in six individuals in Kansas City is food insecure. Three
hundred and fifty thousand people in Kansas City community do not know where their next
meals will come from. Amongst these 350, 000 people, 100, 000 are children. Food insecurity in
Kansas City is linked to multiple poor health outcomes among adults. This includes a range of
complex chronic conditions: heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure (HBP), high cholesterol,
poor mental health, depression, obesity, and higher medical costs (Mari, 2017).
Initiatives Used Currently
Kansas City currently uses a range of ways to tackle food insecurity problem via the
local public health department. The Blue KC’s initiative focuses on food security based on the
understanding that food is medicine as well as the foundation to good health. The local health
department launched its signature community impact program called “Well Stocked” in the year
2018 with the vision to increase the access to nutritious food in the Kansas City’s underserved
areas (Dailey et al., 2015).
The department has partnered with local organizations to speak to hunger disparity
effectively. The department has also declared the Transforming KC Health Research Grant
aiming at awarding up to 400,000$ over the coming two years to the organization that works
together to comprehensively research health outcomes where food insecure families have
accessibility to healthy food. Such partnerships shall assist the department in broadening its
reach and subsequently making meaningful community influence (Tilden, Cox, Moore & Naylor,
2018).

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Proposed Resolution
The department of local health should increase its partnership with Humana to help the
organization achieve its bold goal of twenty percent healthier by 2020. This will help boost the
partnership between the Kansas City Metro Region in Kansas and Missouri to effectively work
together to be amongst the healthiest cities in America (Smith, Malinak, Chang, Perez, Perez,
Settlecowski & Aedo, 2017). This solution is sufficient since it is based on the realization by
Humana and the local health department that health takes place locally and hence the reason
Humana is increasingly working with the Kansas City community, clinicians, and physician
partners to assist in solving the toughest impediments to health in Kansas City. Thus, when the
local health department increases their collaboration with Humana and even adequately fund
them, they will work together to make the health even easier one community and one person
simultaneously.
Through this strong partnership with Humana, the local health department will be able to
ensure that the community has easy access to healthy food because Humana has established
systems that help discourage people from eating fast or convenience foods by making healthier
food options available to the underserved areas. Humana has created a movement that promotes
healthy, and affordable food available in Kansas City neighborhoods by fostering the springing
up farmers markets, healthy corner stores, and community gardens.
Specifically, this solution will help encourage neighborhood stores to carry healthier food
alternatives, inspire businesses and schools to make healthier food alternatives available in
vending machines utilized by employees, students and customers, and to support community
gardens, gardening, farmers markets alongside community supported agriculture, CSA (Huet,
Ford, Edge, Shirley, King & Harper, 2017). This will significantly help tackle the health risks

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and outcomes like obesity, diabetes and chronic health associated with unhealthy foods resulting
from the food insecurity in Kansas City.
Reducing/Eradicating Healthy Behavior
The healthy behavior resulting from the food insecurity include eating fast food or
convenience food because people cannot access healthy food (Buschman, 2018). This unhealthy
behavior or attributes will significantly be reduced if not eradicated through initiatives which aim
at increasing access to healthy food in the underserved areas in Kansas Community. This will be
achieved through:
 Encouraging neighborhood stores to carry healthier food options via healthy
corner stores
 Encouraging business and schools to make healthier food alternatives available in
the vending machines utilized by employees, customers, and students through
healthy vending
 Supporting gardening, farmers markets, community gardens, and CSAs.
Plan Implementation by Government
The government can quickly implement the above plan into law for the common good.
The government can easily pass legislation that makes it mandatory for businesses and schools to
make healthier food options available in the vending machines. Also, the government can easily
pass a law through the parliament that makes it compulsory for neighborhood stores to carry
healthier food options through the healthy corner stores (Minkler, Estrada, Thayer, Juachon,
Wakimoto & Falbe, 2018). The government can also pass a law which outlaws the sale of fast
food and convenience food production and selling within the underserved areas in Kansas

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Community. These laws can then easily be enforced by the public health local department to
ensure that they are strictly followed for the common good of the Kansas City residents.

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References
Buschman, J. D. (2018). Do Community Food Security Assessments Contribute to a Reduction
in Food Insecurity at the County Level?.
Dailey, A. B., Hess, A., Horton, C., Constantian, E., Monani, S., Wargo, B., ... & Gaskin, K.
(2015). Healthy Options: a community-based program to address food insecurity. Journal
of prevention & intervention in the community, 43(2), 83-94.
Huet, C., Ford, J. D., Edge, V. L., Shirley, J., King, N., & Harper, S. L. (2017). Food insecurity
and food consumption by season in households with children in an Arctic city: a cross-
sectional study. BMC public health, 17(1), 578.
Mari, E. E. (2017). Healthy Food on Wheels: An Exploration of Mobile Produce Markets
Through a Food Justice Lens. In Food Justice in US and Global Contexts (pp. 141-157).
Springer, Cham.
Minkler, M., Estrada, J., Thayer, R., Juachon, L., Wakimoto, P., & Falbe, J. (2018). Bringing
healthy retail to urban “food swamps”: A case study of CBPR-informed policy and
neighborhood change in San Francisco. Journal of Urban Health, 95(6), 850-858.
Smith, S., Malinak, D., Chang, J., Perez, M., Perez, S., Settlecowski, E., ... & Aedo, S. (2017).
Implementation of a food insecurity screening and referral program in student-run free
clinics in San Diego, California. Preventive medicine reports, 5, 134-139.
Tilden, V. P., Cox, K. S., Moore, J. E., & Naylor, M. D. (2018). Strategic partnerships to address
adverse social determinants of health: Redefining health care. Nursing outlook, 66(3),
233-236.