Objectives: To explore the relationship between college students’ home zip code demographics and their food security status at a midsized, northeastern university. Methods: Data were collected between 2018-2020 from the College Health and Nutrition Assessment Survey. As part of an online survey, students completed the 6-item USDA Food Insecurity Questionnaire and provided the zip code associated with their primary residence prior to attending college. Students’ answers were used to categorize current food security status: food secure (FS), low food secure (LFS), or very low food secure (VLFS). A food security index was created from 12 unique sets of US Census data. Each zip code was scored by sextiles for each census data and summed; final index values ranged from high to low risk of food insecurity (12-72) with higher scores indicating less risk of food insecurity. Results: After exclusion of missing data, 687 students were included in the final analysis. The sample was predominantly female (62.0%), white (93.1%), first year (47.7%), and reported a zip code from the home state of the institution (39.9%). The mean food security index (±SD) of reported zip codes was 45.3±8.9. In all, 18.8% reported food insecurity, (5.5% VLFS and 13.2% LFS), and 81.2% reported food security or marginal food security. Food insecurity was highest (21.8%) in students from zip codes most at risk for food insecurity based on the index, however, not significantly different from students from zip codes with the most food secure index score (18.8%). Conclusions: Food insecurity among college students has been previously linked by researchers to poorer health, grades, and academic retention. More work is needed to elucidate the role of students’ prior place of residence to identify those at greatest risk of experiencing food insecurity on campus. Funding Source: The NH Agricultural Experiment Station and USDA National Institute of Food and Agricultural Hatch Project 1010738
