Creation of an Accountable Care Community to Address Early Childhood Food Insecurity and Malnutrition in Robeson County, NC

We aim to leverage the collective resources of diverse community partners into an Accountable Care Community (ACC) with the goal of improving the food environment in Robeson County, NC, a predominantly minority community with disparately lower health indicators than the rest of the state. The established ACC will work collaboratively to reduce the prevalence of food insecurity and malnutrition among children ages 0-4 and improve access to healthy, affordable foods county-wide. Experiencing food insecurity at any age is linked to many detrimental health consequences, but consequences are far greater when food insecurity is experienced early in life. Among children ages 0 to 4, food insecurity can change the development of a child’s central nervous system, increasing their risk of poor health, obesity, developmental or growth impairments, social and behavioral problems, and poor academic performance. Given the paramount importance of early nutrition in early life, our ACC will focus on reducing food insecurity and improving food access among preschool-aged children. With this funding, we will gather diverse, multi-sector community partners with expertise on the issues of food insecurity and childhood development into an ACC that leverages our collective resources. We will design, implement, and evaluate community-wide solutions to address food insecurity among children ages 0-4 through hands-on nutritional education. Despite challenges with regards to program reach and accessibility, we are confident our ACC will successfully improve the Robeson food environment. Decreasing food insecurity and malnutrition while improving access to healthy food for the children in our community will have significant positive impacts on the equitable health and wellbeing of all Robeson residents. Keywords: food insecurity, malnutrition, nutrition education, food education, early childhood education (ECE), accountable care community (ACC), child developmentMaster of Public Healt