O-13 A hungry youth is a angry youth: The exploration of food insecurity and school-based violence among Caribbean youth

Methods: The study used data from the 2017 Jamaica and 2018 St. Lucia datasets of the Global School-Based Student Health Survey, with weighted samples of 1667 Jamaican students (60% response rate) and 1953 St. Lucian students (77% response rate). Key indicators of schoolbased violence and food insecurity were recoded as dichotomous variables. Covariates included demographics, substance use, loneliness, and suicidal ideation/attempts. Descriptive statistics and weighted multivariate logistic regression, adjusting for covariates, were conducted using IBM SPSS Version 25 to explore the relationship between food insecurity and school-based violence indicators.

Results: Of the 298 medical records which were reviewed, 101, 100 and 97 were from the Bahamas, Barbados and Jamaica respectively. When stratified by gender the results showed that interpersonal violence injuries were higher among males victims 84% (251 cases) than that of female victims (16%). Fighting/argument was the context of the incident with the highest percentage of interpersonal vio- lence injuries in the Bahamas and Barbados - 60% and 37% respectively and second highest in Jamaica- 35% of cases. Robbery also featured among common causes across coun- tries, being seen in 3% of cases in the Bahamas and Jamaica and 12% in Barbados. In a high percentage of cases, the context was not documented, 28% in Barbados and the Bahamas and 50.5% in Jamaica.

Conclusion: These findings align with previous studies that show in most cases the contributing factor to interpoersonal violence injuires is usually that of fighting/an argurment. By understanding the context in which these incidents occur, the public health approach can be geared toward developing conflict resolution strategies to combat the rising incidence of interpersonal violence in the Caribbean. These findings also provide implications for future research.