About this Research Topic

Background

As access to healthy, nutritious, and safe food becomes increasingly unreliable — especially among low-income groups — research on food insecurity is of critical importance both domestically and abroad. Scientists around the world are leading the way in testing innovative public health and policy strategies to address the reasons behind this trend and develop policies and effective interventions and programs.

Despite recognising the global impact of food and nutrition insecurity, efforts to address it are often siloed and fractured. Sharing research strategies and proven methods among researchers worldwide can help identify common ground and lessons learned for the adaptation and implementation of evidence-informed food and nutrition security interventions.

Mutual learning between U.S. and international scientists can lay the groundwork for developing promising new interventions. Innovative research conducted abroad has the potential to inform efforts in the U.S., where women and people in underserved communities are disproportionately affected by food insecurity with wide-ranging short- and long-term physical and mental health consequences.

This Research Topic builds on the Fogarty-led Lessons Learned from Global Food and Nutrition Insecurity webinar series that highlights innovative research projects on nutrition and food insecurity and health outcomes in global settings and identifies lessons learned and opportunities for adaption in U.S. and other contexts. It will support the work from recent U.S. government investments in food and nutrition security, including the domestically focused White House Conference on Food, Nutrition and Hunger to the passage of the Global Malnutrition Prevention and Treatment Act. It can also address programs that address malnutrition through both nutrition-specific and nutrition-sensitive pathways.

This Research Topic aims to provide an overview of the evidence in global food insecurity, explore existing areas of adaptation, as well as opportunities for translation across setting, and identify priority research gaps specific to vulnerable communities.

In this Research Topic, we welcome manuscripts which focus on the following themes:

1) identifying the multi-sector factors of food and nutrition insecurity in various age groups, across settings and in connection to chronic and infectious diseases

2) highlighting innovative research interventions and program initiatives across different countries to help address food insecurity and promote health equity in different settings;

3) exploring gaps, challenges, and opportunities of using implementation science approaches to adapt, translate, and scale-up impactful food security research interventions.

This Research Topic aims to provide an overview of the evidence in global food insecurity, explore existing areas of adaptation, as well as opportunities for translation across settings, and identify priority research gaps.

Keywords: Food security, Food insecurity, Global food nutrition insecurity

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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