US Housing Insecurity and the Health of Very Young Children.

CHILD development deviations -- Risk factors; METROPOLITAN areas; ANALYSIS of variance; BODY weight; CHILDREN'S health; CONFIDENCE intervals; STATISTICAL correlation; EPIDEMIOLOGY; HOMELESSNESS; HOUSING; INTERVIEWING; POVERTY; RESEARCH funding; RESIDENTIAL mobility; SURVEYS; FOOD safety; DATA analysis; MULTIPLE regression analysis; RESIDENTIAL patterns; CROSS-sectional method

Objectives. We investigated the association between housing insecurity and the health of very young children. Methods. Between 1998 and 2007, we interviewed 22069 low-income caregivers with children younger than 3 years who were seen in 7 US urban medical centers. We assessed food insecurity, child health status, developmental risk, weight, and housing insecurity for each child's household. Our indicators for housing insecurity were crowding (>2 people/bedroom or>1 family/residence) and multiple moves (‡2 moves within the previous year). Results. After adjusting for covariates, crowding was associated with household food insecurity compared with the securely housed (adjusted odds ratio [AOR]=1.30; 95% confidence interval [CI]=1.18, 1.43), as were multiple moves (AOR=1.91; 95% CI=1.59, 2.28). Crowding was also associated with child food insecurity (AOR=1.47; 95% CI=1.34, 1.63), and so were multiple moves (AOR=2.56; 95% CI=2.13, 3.08). Multiple moves were associated with fair or poor child health (AOR=1.48; 95% CI=1.25, 1.76), developmental risk (AOR 1.71; 95% CI=1.33, 2.21), and lower weight-for-age z scores (-0.082 vs -0.013; P=.02). Conclusions. Housing insecurity is associated with poor health, lower weight, and developmental risk among young children. Policies that decrease housing insecurity can promote the health of young children and should be a priority. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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