Food is foundational to health, yet millions of Americans struggle to afford enough food.

In California, food insecurity is rising. According to the 2024 California Health Interview Survey (CHIS), 47.2% of California adults earning less than 200% of the federal poverty level — $30,120 for a single adult and $62,400 for a family of four — were food insecure.

That means nearly half of the lowest income adults in the state could not afford enough to eat. 

This is a sharp increase from 2001, when CHIS data showed that 29.1% of adults in this income group were food insecure. 

For 25 years, CHIS has been a reliable source of data on food insecurity, offering detailed insights across regions in California, race and ethnicity, sexual orientation and gender identity, age, gender, disability, residency, language, family and marital status, as well as links to health outcomes and basic needs. These data have shaped news coverage, informed legislative action, and supported advocacy efforts aimed at building more equitable food and social policies.

Recent federal government budget cuts have led to cutting SNAP as well as discontinuing the nationwide annual survey of household food security. So families and communities that are already struggling are now at risk of becoming statistically invisible. As a result of these cuts, state funding for CHIS food security measures is also threatened.

CHIS has been working with the San Francisco-Marin Food Bank, which has generously funded the expansion of the food insecurity questions in the 2025–2026 CHIS to also include households earning 200–400% FPL, so we can better understand how food insecurity affects those earning above traditional poverty thresholds.

We invite you to join us on Wednesday, March 4, for a deep dive into food insecurity: who is most affected and how these patterns intersect with broader social and health conditions.

Susan H. Babey, PhD, director of research at the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research (CHPR), and Joelle Wolstein May, PhD, MPP, research scientist at the UCLA CHPR, will share rates of food insecurity data by race and ethnicity, sexual orientation and gender identity, regions in California, and more. They will also highlight how food insecurity links to health and other basic needs, including housing instability and insurance status. 

Maxwell Titsworth, chief data and technology officer at the San Francisco-Marin Food Bank, will talk about the importance of CHIS food insecurity data and how the food bank uses these data.

Following the presentation, CHIS data dissemination manager Jacob Rosalez will provide a live demo of AskCHIS™ and AskCHIS™ Neighborhood Edition (NE), CHIS’s free and publicly available online health query tools. Attendees will learn how to set up an account, search for food insecurity data across demographic groups and regions (including census tract, ZIP code, city, county, and legislative district levels in AskCHIS™ NE); identify patterns and trends; and view and export data in tables, charts, and graphs.