Reference no: EM133339046

Assignment:

Case Study:

In the United States, the number of people experiencing food insecurity was 38 million in 2020 (Coleman-Jenson et al., 2021).

As a public health professional you are working with a team to address the issue and you observe the following:

• The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated the issue of food security as people were unable to work, access fresh foods, leave their home, etc.
• Food insecurity is driven by many social determinants of health like poverty and unemployment.
• Researchers suggest that SNAP, the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, is making an impact in our efforts to reduce food insecurity rates (Gunderson, 2022).

Some members of your team think the focus of your work in food insecurity should be to continue building support for and access to programs like SNAP especially because of the impact we have learned about SNAP access for children (a recent study showed that adults who received SNAP during childhood were over three times as likely to be food secure than adults who were eligible for SNAP but didn't receive the benefits; Insolera et al., 2022), but others think the most effective way to address the issue is to look more at nutrition security, not food security, by considering restrictions on unhealthy foods and food choices set by nutrition experts.

Identify the ethical principles involved in the case study as your public health team determines which solution/approach may be the best, and use the steps of public health ethical inquiry to decide which approach your team should take. Be sure to clearly identify (by underlining or bolding) and describe each step and ethical principle as it relates to the dilemma and your team's chosen approach.