To validate the telephone modality of the Latin American and Caribbean Food Security Scale (ELCSA) included in three waves of a phone survey to estimate the monthly household food insecurity prevalence during the COVID-19 pandemic in Mexico.

We examined the reliability and internal validity of the ELCSA scale in three repeated waves of cross-sectional surveys with Rasch models. We estimated the monthly prevalence of food insecurity in the general population and in households with and without children and compared them with a national 2018 survey. We tested concurrent validity by testing associations of food insecurity with socio-economic status and anxiety.

ENCOVID-19 is a monthly telephone cross-sectional survey collecting information on the well-being of Mexican households during the pandemic lockdown. Surveys used probabilistic samples, and we used data from April (n 833), May (n 850) and June 2020 (n 1674).

Mexicans 18 years or older who had a mobile telephone.

ELCSA had an adequate model fit and food insecurity was associated, within each wave, with more poverty and anxiety. The COVID-19 lockdown was associated with an important reduction in food security, decreasing stepwise from 38·9 % in 2018 to 24·9 % in June 2020 in households with children.

Telephone surveys were a feasible strategy to monitor reductions in food security during the COVID-19 lockdown.

To study the barriers and enablers of breast-feeding protection and support after the 2017 earthquakes in Mexico.

A qualitative study using a phenomenological approach to analyse data collected from in-depth interviews, virtual ethnography and documentary analysis of newspapers.

Data were collected after the September 2017 earthquakes in Mexico (from 8 September 2017 to 15 May 2018).

The participants included key informants (n 13) from different sectors. Postings retrieved from forty-two Facebook and forty-seven Twitter accounts and a WhatsApp group informed the virtual ethnography analysis. Newspaper material covering the 2017 earthquakes in Mexico (seven newspapers) was retrieved for the documentary analysis.

Interviews with key informants revealed a lack of knowledge, unclear institutional protocols during emergencies and lack of enforcement of existing international frameworks. The virtual ethnography uncovered a strong call for donations in the immediate aftermath of the earthquakes, and generalized donations of formula revealed a tense relationship between actions taken by breast-feeding experts and the negative reactions from the government and citizens. This analysis highlights the relevance of pre-existing networks of experts in protecting and supporting breast-feeding. From the newspaper documentary analysis, similar themes emerged.

This study identified key barriers and enablers in the protection and support of breast-feeding during the 2017 earthquakes in Mexico. Relevant actors should embrace the lessons highlighted in this study because countries such as Mexico are likely to experience other emergencies in the near future.

To assess, from a systems perspective, how climate vulnerability and socio-economic and political differences at the municipal and state levels explain food insecurity in Mexico.

Using a cross-sectional design with official secondary data, we estimated three-level multinomial hierarchical linear models.

The study setting is Mexico’s states and municipalities in 2014.

Heads of households in a representative sample of the general population.

At the municipal level, vulnerability to climate disasters and a poverty index were significant predictors of food insecurity after adjusting for household-level variables. At the state level, gross domestic product and the number of nutrition programmes helped explain different levels of food insecurity but change in political party did not. Predictors varied in strength and significance according to the level of food insecurity.

Findings evidence that, beyond food assistance programmes and household characteristics, multiple variables operating at different levels – like climate vulnerability and poverty – contribute to explain the degree of food insecurity. Food security governance is a well-suited multisectoral approach to address the complex challenge of hunger and access to a nutritious diet.

The present paper investigated the impact of the 2008 financial crisis on food security in Mexico and how it disproportionally affected vulnerable households.

A generalized ordered logistic regression was estimated to assess the impact of the crisis on households’ food security status. An ordinary least squares and a quantile regression were estimated to evaluate the effect of the financial crisis on a continuous proxy measure of food security defined as the share of a household’s current income devoted to food expenditures.

Both analyses were performed using pooled cross-sectional data from the Mexican National Household Income and Expenditure Survey 2008 and 2010.

The analytical sample included 29 468 households in 2008 and 27 654 in 2010.

The generalized ordered logistic model showed that the financial crisis significantly (P<0·05) decreased the probability of being food secure, mildly or moderately food insecure, compared with being severely food insecure (OR=0·74). A similar but smaller effect was found when comparing severely and moderately food-insecure households with mildly food-insecure and food-secure households (OR=0·81). The ordinary least squares model showed that the crisis significantly (P<0·05) increased the share of total income spent on food (β coefficient of 0·02). The quantile regression confirmed the findings suggested by the generalized ordered logistic model, showing that the effects of the crisis were more profound among poorer households.

The results suggest that households that were more vulnerable before the financial crisis saw a worsened effect in terms of food insecurity with the crisis. Findings were consistent with both measures of food security – one based on self-reported experience and the other based on food spending.