Food insecurity common among residents in radiology and other specialties
Food insecurity appears to be common among residents in radiology and other specialties, according to a new single-center study published Monday.
This limited access to safe and nutritional sustenance impacts about 14% of U.S. households, leading to poorer mental and physical health and lower academic performance. Among medical trainees, common drivers of food insecurity can include high educational debt, demanding schedules and modest stipends, experts detail in JAMA Network Open.
Researchers aimed to better understand the prevalence of this problem at the Yale New Haven Health System, polling residents about their access to healthful foods. About 31% of those surveyed met the criteria for food insecurity, including 50% of radiology residents included in the study, with higher frequency among first-year trainees.
“These findings suggest reported food insecurity is common and concentrated in the first postgraduate year, consistent with financial pressures during the transition into residency…,” Atalay Demiray, MD, MSc, with the Department of Health Policy and Management at Yale, and co-authors wrote Oct. 26.
The cross-sectional, anonymous electronic survey was sent to all physicians in accredited, postgraduate training, beginning in August 2023. A total of about 600 individuals met the study’s criteria, with 164 trainees participating and submitting complete food security data. Overall, 30.5% (or 50/164) met the criteria for food insecurity, with a score of 3 or higher on the U.S. Department of Agriculture module.
Postgraduate year-one prevalence (45%) was about twice that of trainees in their later years (23%). Lack of money was associated with food insecurity, whereas lack of time was not a driving factor. Reported food insecurity prevalence ranged from about 19% among surgical (5/26) and internal medicine trainees (7/36) up to 40% for residents in anesthesiology (4/10) and 50% for those in radiology (5/10).
“Together with the recent multi-institutional findings of Thomas and colleagues, These results suggest that food insecurity is an under-recognized issue in graduate medical education and that financial supports targeted to the PGY-1 transition warrant prospective evaluation,” the authors concluded. “Future multi-institutional, longitudinal studies incorporating richer measures of household economics, debt, and dependents are needed to refine prevalence estimates, clarify mechanisms, and assess targeted interventions.”
Marty Stempniak has covered healthcare since 2012, with his byline appearing in the American Hospital Association's member magazine, Modern Healthcare and McKnight's. Prior to that, he wrote about village government and local business for his hometown newspaper in Oak Park, Illinois. He won a Peter Lisagor and Gold EXCEL awards in 2017 for his coverage of the opioid epidemic.