Integrating food insecurity measurement in nutrition and health research: Key considerations and best practices
November 5, 2025 | 12:00 PM - 01:00 PM
2025-11-05 12:00 PM 2025-11-05 01:00 PM Integrating food insecurity measurement in nutrition and health research: Key considerations and best practices America/New_YorkSpeaker: Valerie Tarasuk, CM, PhD (University of Toronto)
Webinar description:
The monitoring of household food insecurity through population health surveys in Canada has spawned a robust body of research on the nutrition, health, and healthcare implications of food insecurity in this country. Now, more researchers and health professionals are investigating food insecurity within different populations and contexts for the purposes of describing vulnerable groups, understanding health and behavioural outcomes, evaluating policy and program interventions, and screening patients. This webinar will explore key considerations when conducting and interpreting research on food insecurity, considering primary data collections and secondary analyses of population survey data. We will compare different survey instruments and classification methods and discuss how to appropriately integrate this construct into research and practice settings.
Learning Objectives:
By the end of the webinar participants will be able to:
- Define household food insecurity and describe how it is monitored in Canada
- Compare commonly used food insecurity survey instruments (e.g., 18-item vs. 6-item HFSSM) and classification approaches, including their strengths, limitations, and implications for research design and interpretation.
- Identify appropriate strategies for integrating food insecurity measures into primary data collection, including choosing indicators, defining reference periods, and aligning with study goals.
- Critically assess the use of secondary data (e.g., Canadian Income Survey, Canadian Community Health Survey, etc.) to study food insecurity and its relationship with health outcomes, behaviours, and policy interventions.
- Recognize common challenges in food insecurity research and apply best practices to ensure accurate and meaningful analysis and communication of findings.
Moderator: Tim Li, MSCom (University of Toronto)
About the Speaker:
Valerie Tarasuk is a Professor Emerita in the Department of Nutritional Sciences at the University of Toronto. Her research has extended to Canadian food policy and population-level dietary assessment, but her primary scholarly contributions have been in the area of household food insecurity. She has led several tri-council research grants to elucidate the scope, nature, and health implications of this problem in Canada, assess the effectiveness of community responses, and determine how public policies and programs impact food insecurity prevalence and severity. In 2011, she led the establishment of PROOF, an interdisciplinary research program launched with funding from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research to identify effective policy approaches to reduce household food insecurity in Canada. Her contributions have been recognized with the Earle Willard McHenry Award for Distinguished Service in Nutrition (2017), Fellow Distinctions from the Canadian Nutrition Society (2021) and American Society of Nutrition (2024), honorary doctorates from Queen’s University (2018) and the University of Guelph (2023), and her appointment to the Order of Canada (2025).
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