Designing Decision Support Systems to address Food Insecurity

It is well-documented that those experiencing food insecurity compromise on quantity and nutritional quality of food, go without food, experience anxiety, stress and social isolation. Food insecurity impacts the physical, social and emotional health of the population across the lifespan and specifically the development and educational attainment of children and adolescents, making it a serious public health issue. There are multiple influencing and interrelated factors that contribute to food insecurity. The major predictor of food insecurity however is low income for purchasing food and other commodities in a household.

The responsibility for ensuring food security at any government level is at best limited and this challenge is intensified due to the associated factors listed above cutting across multiple government departments. In Australia and the UK the dominant response has been to provide people with emergency food relief through the charitable sector, for example via food banks. There has been an unprecedented expansion of the charitable food sector in response to an increased usage of food banks. However, charity does not address the causes of food security and is powerless to prevent households from falling into food insecurity or help them escape it.

Through the Monash Warwick Alliance Dr Sue Kleve and Dr Martine Barons focussed on engaging with policymakers, experts by experience and front-line workers to ensure every aspect of the causal pathways for food insecurity was taken into account properly within the statistical modelling. This was done both in Cardinia Shire in Australia and Warwickshire in the UK, to compare and contrast the systems and experiences. The eventual aim was to build an integrated food security decision support system for addressing food security at national and local levels. The system combined various sources of data (on income, housing, employment and food costs) to produce a robust and transparent way in order to provide a score for each potential policy change. This will enable Governments to make evidence-based policy decisions that will address the source of food insecurity.

Mapping the causes of food insecurity - It is now clear that the costs of cooking and food preparation equipment must be accounted for within the ‘cost of living’ element of the model. The researchers have defined a minimum food equipment standard to help charities and policymakers provide for this need. It is also clear that, for an Australian IDSS, the distance of food shops relative to homes and the availability of transport has a greater influence than that in the UK. These findings already inform the evaluation of the Council Food Strategy Plan within Cardinia Shire Council and they are scheduled to be shared with Warwickshire Food Forum, Coventry Food Forum and UK community organisers who contributed to the study.

Find out more about Dr Kleve’s research here.