A cross-sectional community based survey was conducted to determine the impact of food insecurity to the nutritional status. The Radimer/Cornell Hunger Scale was utilized to measure food insecurity. The key adaptations to the nine-item Radimer/Cornell items included translation to Filipino, and constructing the items as questions rather than statements. Anthropometric measurements were assessed to determine the nutritional status of the children which were consequently correlated to each householdʼs state of food security.The nutritional status data was gathered from 159 children aged 6 to 71 months residing in Barangay Nabitasan, Leganes, Iloilo, Philippines. The respondents for the Radimer/Cornell Questionnaire were the respective mothers or guardians of the children.Results showed that 42.1% of the children suffer from malnutrition and 73% of the households were classified as food insecure. Food insecurity in the household has a significant association with the nutritional status of the children. Food secure children are 3 times more likely to have a normal nutritional status as compared to those who are food insecure. A logistics regression model found that increase in annual family income, and having both market and alternative food sources increases the likelihood of being food secure. However, increase in number of children was associated with a decreased likelihood of being food secure.Our findings suggested that food insecurity is directly associated with poor nutritional status of children aged 6 to 71 months within the scope of the study.

Biography:
Dr. Philip Ian Padilla is a Professor of Microbiology and the former University of the Philippines Faculty Regent. He was the former Chair of the Division of Biological Sciences, College of Arts and Sciences, and former Director of the National Institute of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology, UP Visayas. He was a graduate of UP Visayas (BS Biology, cum laude), UP College of Medicine (MD), and Nagasaki Universityʼs Institute of Tropical Medicine (PhD). He was trained as a post-doctoral research fellow (Biochemistry and Cell Biology) at the Pulmonary-Critical Care Medicine Branch, National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland.