Research Summary
In Canada, an estimated 8.7 million people, including 2.1 million children, are food insecure. As Canada Research Chair in Food, Health and Social Justice, Dr. Lesley Frank is trying to understand what’s at the root of infant food insecurity in high-income countries like Canada—and how to prevent it and mitigate its harms.
Frank and her research team are examining systems of power and politics and the critical oversight of poverty and food insecurity in the early years. They aim to understand how families that experience food insecurity cope and to come up with effective tools to measure infant food insecurity at a population level. Their research will produce knowledge that can help prevent health inequity at its roots. It will also help address emerging threats to first-food systems—the sources and networks that provide infants with their earliest nutrition—and foster the structural interventions needed to prevent food insecurity.