A manual for reliably measuring Latin American household food security that helps international agencies and researchers in identifying high-risk groups, creating hunger maps and targeting food security programs and resources has been published by a School of Public Health professor and colleagues.
The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) published the Latin American and Caribbean Household Food Security Scale (ELCSA) manual. This evidence-based guidebook presents the validation, method of application and uses a 15-item standardized household food insecurity measurement scale adapted from the U.S. Household Food Security Survey Module and is written in Spanish.
The project has been co-led since 2006 by YSPH Professor Rafael Pérez-Escamilla and colleagues from The University of Campinas in Brazil, University of Antioquia in Colombia and Ohio State University. Support for the project has also come from the FAO, several Latin American governments and local academic institutions.
The 85-page manual can be seen at: http://www.fao.org/alc/file/media/pubs/2012/elcsa.pdf
The origins of the ELCSA manual go back to Pérez-Escamilla’s community-based participatory research that led to the adaptation and application of a culturally appropriate Spanish version of the U.S. Household Food Security measurement scale to a small sample of Latino households in Hartford, Conn.
“I never dreamed the global reach that translating this work first into the Brazilian context and then to the whole Latin American region would have,” said Pérez-Escamilla. “Latin America and the Caribbean have indeed become the first world region with a standardized and widely accepted scale to reliably measure household food insecurity. The implication for ELCSA to help improve evidence-based policies and programs and ultimately the food security and well being of vulnerable communities in the region is enormous”
The manual builds on the national Brazilian household foods security measurement project co-led since 2003 by Pérez-Escamilla and Ana Maria Segall-Correa of the University of Campinas in Brazil. ELCSA and related scales are already being applied in national household expenditure and health and nutrition surveys in Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Guatemala and Mexico.
It is also assisting governments with better mapping, planning and delivery of their food and social assistance programs. It is expected that this manual will facilitate the spread of ELCSA throughout the Americas and beyond. The manual’s methodology allows for program evaluation and further research into causes, consequences and solutions to food insecurity.