CHEEER faculty member Ther Aung recently had a submission to JAMA Network published regarding energy insecurity and mental health.
With rising electricity costs and extreme temperature events, energy poverty/insecurity in the U.S. is likely to worsen but the issue remains underrecognized in public health and policy intervention strategies.
In this paper, they showed that energy poor U.S. adults – those reporting that they were:
Unable to pay energy bill
Kept home at unsafe temperature
Forwent food and medicine to pay an energy bill
Additionally, they were more likely to have depression and anxiety symptoms compared to energy secure adults, and on a scale similar to other more known social determinants of health. The paper also contains several policy recommendations.
