“Like, What Else Could Go Wrong?” Multiple Contextual Stressors in Food Insecure Households

ABSTRACT

Food insecurity is often considered in isolation from other stressors, limiting our contextual understanding of individual or familial experiences. Hence, this study examined families in their unique contexts, recognizing the myriad of hardships they experienced. Informed by the cumulative risk framework, in-depth interviews were conducted with 59 caregivers recruited from food pantries in New York. Analytic induction techniques were used for data analysis. In addition to food insecurity, limited income and unemployment, mental health, physical health, and public assistance were identified. Most participants experienced multiple stressors concurrently. These findings have implications for developing interventions grounded in families’ experiences and needs.

KEYWORDS:

• Families
• food insecurity
• multiple stressors
• qualitative
• New York State

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank all our participants who agreed to participate in our study. We would also like to thank Deana Morenoff, Elizabeth Cauchois, Emily Acuna, Helen Oko, and Cathy Canary who helped at different stages of this research project.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This project was funded by McSilver Institute Pilot Research Grant.