Blindness or Low Vision in Kids a Strong Indicator of Food Insecurity, Study Finds

Findings from this study show that the association between debilitating vision impairment and food insecurity extends beyond marginal food insufficiency to more severe forms of food deprivation and underscore the need for routine food insecurity screening and for policies that better integrate social and medical support. Photo: Breanne McGhee, OD. Click image to enlarge. It’s been consistently shown that adults with uncorrectable visual impairment (VI) have significantly higher odds of experiencing food insecurity, but little data exists in this space regarding pediatric patients. In a recent study, researchers sought to determine the association between the two in the United States population. They found similar results as with adults—there is an increased likelihood of food insecurity in children with severe visual problems, but there wasn’t a significant difference across demographic subgroups, indicating it extends beyond marginal food insufficiency. The findings were reported in American Journal of Ophthalmology.A total of 153,285 children from birth to 17 years of age from the 2021-2023 National Survey of Children’s Health were included, representing 209,400,289 US children. The analysis compared households with a child experiencing persistent visual impairment to those with no visual diagnosis. Vision impairment was defined based on caregiver response to the question: “Does this child have any of the following conditions: Blindness or problems with seeing, even when wearing glasses?”Households with a child with a visual problem had 71% higher odds of being deemed food insecure. The proportion of households experiencing very low food security was nearly four times higher in the visually impaired group (2.7% vs. 0.6%).The association was largely consistent across demographic subgroups, with no significant effect modification by household income, parental education or child age. This suggests that uncorrected visual impairment represents a universal risk factor for food insecurity that transcends traditional socioeconomic boundaries, the researchers suggested in their paper. “Our sensitivity analysis demonstrated that even when using a conservative definition including only low and very low food security, households with VI children had 83% higher odds of experiencing food insecurity, exceeding the 71% increase observed with the standard definition,” they wrote. “This indicates that the association between VI and food insecurity extends beyond marginal food insufficiency to more severe forms of food deprivation.”Even middle-income families had over threefold higher odds of food insecurity compared with the wealthiest households, and racial and ethnic disparities were also evident, with Black, Hispanic, Indigenous and multiracial households facing elevated food insecurity risk compared to white households.“Together, these findings highlight that food insecurity risk is not confined to households in poverty, and that families raising children with VI face disproportionate vulnerability across the entire food insecurity severity spectrum,” the authors wrote in their paper. “The observed association between pediatric VI and food insecurity can be explained by economic and functional burdens unique to vision-related disability.”Families of children with blindness or low vision often incur substantial direct costs, including medical care, assistive devices and specialized educational materials that are frequently not covered by insurance, as well as indirect costs such as reduced parental employment due to increased caregiving demands. These financial strains divert limited household resources away from meeting basic needs such as food.“In addition, food insecurity itself may have functional consequences that exacerbate VI, creating a bidirectional cycle: poor nutrition can impair ocular development and increase vulnerability to visual health problems, while inadequate access to healthcare and assistive services may delay diagnosis and worsen impairment,” the authors wrote in their paper. These findings underscore the need for routine food insecurity screening in both pediatric and eyecare clinics, the authors concluded.Click here for the journal source. Talaparthy T, Zumlot Y, Al-Zubi A, et al. Association of vision impairment with food insecurity in U.S. children. Amer J Ophthalmol. November 12, 2025. [Epub ahead of print.] This article was developed by the editorial staff in conjunction with experts in the field. In the process, AI may have been among the editorial tools used to meet the goals of human editors, who approved all content.