What if hunger were treated like a vital sign?

Food insecurity adds an estimated $53 billion to the nation’s medical bill every year, per a 2019 study. Yet most providers still log it as a note in the patient chart rather than a vital sign worth treating. It’s a problem with few headlines or funding dollars, but it has an outsized impact on people’s health. More Americans are food insecure now than in 2020: roughly 1 in 7 households, or almost 48 million people. They enter surgery and hospitalization with a sicker baseline, higher rates of…