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Abstract
With the increased use of food pantries to improve food accessibility, food pantries may play a large role to promote good diabetes mellitus (DM) self-management in low socioeconomic status (SES) individuals. A complete literature review was done to investigate and analyze published research utilizing food pantries as sites to implement interventions towards improving DM selfmanagement. A thorough search within public information domain including Google scholar, PubMed, NCBI, using MeSH keywords: food insecurity, low SES, DM selfmanagement and self-efficacy. An estimated 20 article resources were included to generate a concise and descriptive findings towards answering the research question. Only low socioeconomic status individuals with food insecurity and DM were included in this review. Results findings revealed only few published studies involving food-pantry-based interventions and DM selfmanagement. Although the studies confirmed that foodinsecurity strongly influenced inefficient DM management and glycemic control, they also produced mixed findings in promoting self-management of the disease. Some study findings confirmed significant improvement in DM selfmanagement, while others did not find specific significance in promoting self-management. More research is needed to further evaluate the effectiveness of food-pantry based interventions in DM management.
Keywords: Food insecurity, low food supply, food scarcity, low socioeconomic status, diabetes mellitus selfmanagement, diabetic mellitus self-efficacy, food pantry, food bank
Introduction
Diabetes mellitus (DM) is not only a medical issue; it is a major public health problem that is manageable (1). Yet, it has a high disease burden on individuals and the society, with its complications causing high rates of morbidity and mortality resulting in substantial health care costs (2). DM is the 7th leading cause of death in the United States, with an immense disease prevalence of 1.5 million people being diagnosed annually and 84.1 million Americans noted to be prediabetic (3).
Some of the numerous risk factors associated with DM include age, ethnicity, family history, smoking, obesity, physical inactivity, environmental effects, low socioecomic status (SES). Current guidelines for diabetes management include improving blood glucose control through patient engagement in diabetes self-management and lifestyle change, which will require formal diabetes education about diet, physical activity, blood glucose monitoring, pharmacotherapy-related intervention, and regular medical follow-up intervals with screening for complications (4). Unfortunately, meeting these guidelines is difficult especially in individuals with low SES as they have less...