This Food for Life Global blogpost explores the meaning of food security versus food insecurity. Food security is the confidence of knowing where and when your next meal will be and that if hungry, one will soon be able to feed oneself. The World Food Summit of 1996 defined food security as “when all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life.” On the other hand, food insecurity is the inability to know where and when one’s next meal will be. The post also covers four levels of food security, causes and effects of food insecurity, elements of food security, and the distinction between hunger and food insecurity.

When the COVID-19 pandemic forced schools to close, everything changed. Many meal providers found themselves rapidly adapting their operations to reach kids in their communities. This report presents innovations in child nutrition programs illustrated by case studies informed by interviews. The report includes innovative ideas pertaining to meals served, outreach, delivery, partnerships, and areas beyond food.

This research study illustrates how intimate partner violence against women is a global public health problem with many short-term and long-term effects on the physical and mental health of women and their children. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) call for its elimination in target 5.2. To monitor governments' progress towards SDG target 5.2, this study aimed to provide global, regional, and country baseline estimates of physical or sexual (or both) violence against women by male intimate partners. Included studies were conducted between 2000 and 2018, representative at the national or sub-national level and included women aged 15 years or older, and used act-based measures of physical or sexual (or both) intimate partner violence. The findings indicated that globally, 27% of ever-partnered women aged 15–49 years are estimated to have experienced physical or sexual (or both) intimate partner violence in their lifetime. Also, 13% experienced it in the previous year before they were surveyed. This violence starts early, affecting adolescent girls and young women, with 24% of women aged 15–19 years and 26% of women aged 19–24 years having already experienced intimate partner violence at least once since the age of 15.

Families experiencing poverty and economic pressure have increased risk for child maltreatment, intimate partner violence, and acts of violence by youth. This article highlights several programs that reduce rates of family and child poverty, including TANF, but it notes how TANF policies in particular have the greatest economic security policy discrepancies across states despite research that shows policies that increase access to money protect against family and youth violence. The article discusses research that indicates work requirements in TANF and other evidence-based interventions may protect against violence by increasing individual and family resources. However, one-size-fits-all work requirements may have unanticipated negative effects, such as an increase in sanctions that contribute to unemployment or under-employment when an individual cannot meet set requirements or leaving single mothers with less time to care for their children, which may increase the risk of child maltreatment.

This article identifies findings from a recent study which found that witnessing parental domestic violence can increase a child’s risk of depression and other mental health issues. The study included more than 17,700 Canadian adults who took part in a national survey on mental health. 22.5% of children who were exposed to chronic parental domestic violence during childhood had major depression at some point in their life, 15% had an anxiety disorder, and nearly 27% had a substance abuse disorder. In comparison, the rates among people with no history of violence between their parents were 9%, 7% and 19%, respectively.

This Mayo Clinic blogpost illustrates ways to recognize domestic violence in its many forms, including emotional, sexual, and physical abuse and threats of abuse. Further, the blogpost presents the cycle of an abusive situation, why the survivor should not take the blame in an abusive relationship, and challenges for special populations, and offers survivors tips on how to create a safety plan and where to find help.

This blogpost presents a broad set of information on what domestic violence is, how to recognize the warning signs of abuse, how to seek help for oneself or a loved one, and ways we can all work towards preventing intimate partner violence. There is also discussion on the short- and long-term impacts of domestic violence on physical health and the effect on a survivor’s mental health, screening tools, and ways to assess risk for further abuse. Special attention is paid toward understanding the impact of domestic violence on minority populations, LBGTQ+ people, and immigrants.

This guide complements federal efforts (such as the Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation’s From Theory to Practice Project) to expand the use of administrative data for building evidence and is a resource to assist program evaluation teams in assessing the feasibility and potential value of examining long-term outcomes. The guide describes common steps for linking evaluation data and administrative data. Examples and case studies throughout the guide highlight efforts to research long-term economic outcomes such as participant employment and earnings, but the concepts presented should be applicable to a variety of social policy research contexts.

Linking government data between different agencies and departments is a powerful strategy to connect people to valuable benefits that they might otherwise miss. By linking data, the California Policy Lab helped the state of California measure how many Californians receiving safety-net benefits were at risk of not receiving federal stimulus payments, the state Earned Income Tax Credit, and the advanced Child Tax Credit – resulting in millions of dollars of federal aid delivered to non-filing Californians. This toolkit provides step-by-step guidance for government leadership and their staff on how to develop and execute cross-departmental data linkages by focusing on a case study on increasing the take-up of anti-poverty tax credits.

It is crucial for TANF agencies to use their data to understand how programs are working for the families they serve and how to improve those programs. Yet it is often difficult for agencies to prioritize and implement data use and analytics for program improvement. This brief discusses accessible and attainable strategies to increase data use and the dissemination of analyses, with the goal of supporting more evidence-based policymaking and improving programs for children and families participating in TANF.