| Although nutrition education programs for pregnant women have produced favorable outcomes, they have been less successful in improving the quality of maternal diets, and have not explicitly addressed food insecurity. The purpose of this study was to measure the extent of food insecurity among a clinical population of low-income pregnant women, and to assess the impact of an educational approach to reduce food insecurity on the quality of maternal diets.; The subjects were 180 inner-city, adult, pregnant women at a hospital-based prenatal clinic. Subjects were enrolled over a ten-month period. Each one-week period was randomly assigned to receive either (a) standard nutrition education (comparison group) or (b) a standard nutrition education plus community-based food resource information, in the form of an educational handout (intervention group). A questionnaire was used to assess food security status, diet quality, use of community-based food programs and resources, and barriers to utilizing food resources. A follow-up questionnaire was completed by 119 (66%) of the women.; The results showed that 65% of the baseline sample indicated food insecurity. Food insecure women had less education, were less likely to shop at supermarkets, and were more likely to cite barriers to obtaining food than food secure women. Level of food insecurity was significantly negatively correlated with fruit and vegetable intake, and was positively correlated with age and the total number of barriers.; Both at baseline and at follow-up, there were no significant differences between the study groups for food insecurity, diet quality, or utilization of food programs and resources. At follow-up, the comparison group was significantly more likely to cite two of the barriers than the intervention group. Therefore, it was concluded that the educational intervention had no measurable impact on food insecurity, diet quality, or utilization of food resources, and minimal, if any, impact on the barriers.; It is recommended that future research focus on those women with the highest levels of food insecurity, and that pregnancy might not be the optimal time for intervention. Also, food security scales could be used as screening tools in clinical settings, so that food insecurity is addressed during nutrition education. |
