Access to Care and Health Outcomes Among Women Veterans Using Veterans Administration Health Care: Association With Food Insufficiency.

Narain K, Bean-Mayberry B, Washington DL, Canelo IA, Darling JE, Yano EM. Access to Care and Health Outcomes Among Women Veterans Using Veterans Administration Health Care: Association With Food Insufficiency. Women's health issues : official publication of the Jacobs Institute of Women's Health. 2018 May 1; 28(3):267-272.

Related HSR&D Project(s)

• CRE 12-026 – Implementation of VA Womens Health Patient Aligned Care Teams WH-PACTs
• RCS 05-195 – Research Career Scientist Award

Dimensions for VA is a web-based tool available to VA staff that enables detailed searches of published research and research projects.

If you have VA-Intranet access, click here for more information vaww.hsrd.research.va.gov/dimensions/

VA staff not currently on the VA network can access Dimensions by registering for an account using their VA email address.    Search Dimensions for VA for this citation
* Don't have VA-internal network access or a VA email address? Try searching the free-to-the-public version of Dimensions

Search for Abstract from PubMed

---

Abstract:

BACKGROUND: Food insecurity has been associated with worse health outcomes in the civilian population. Male veterans of the Gulf Wars have been shown to have a higher prevalence of food insecurity than similarly situated civilians. Women veterans have more risk factors for food insecurity, relative to male veterans, yet little is known about the prevalence of food insecurity in this cohort. METHODS: We used the Women Veterans' Health Utilization and Experience Survey for this analysis. Our study population consisted of women veterans who had at least three primary care or women's health visits to 1 of 12 Veteran's Health Administration health care facilities from December 2013 to November 2014. Multiple logistic regression was used to examine the relationship between food insufficiency (an inadequate amount of food intake owing to a lack of money or resources), delayed/missed care, anxiety, depression, and self-reported fair to poor health, controlling for race/ethnicity, marital status, and employment status. RESULTS: The prevalence of food insufficiency among women veterans was 27.6%. Being food insufficient was associated with 16.4, 15.4, 14.9, and 12.1 percentage point increases in the probability of delayed/missed care, screening positive for anxiety, screening positive for depression, and reporting fair to poor health, respectively (p  <  .05). CONCLUSIONS: The prevalence of food insufficiency in this cohort was associated with delayed access to health care and worse health outcomes. Interventions addressing Veterans Administration access and health outcomes will need to examine the potential role of food insufficiency.