• Pablo Gaitán-Rossi, Mireya Vilar-Compte, Graciela Teruel, and Rafael Pérez-Escamilla.
• Research Institute for Equitable Development EQUIDE, Universidad Iberoamericana, Prolongación Paseo de la Reforma 880, Lomas de Santa Fé, Mexico City01219, Mexico.
• Public Health Nutr. 2021 Feb 1; 24 (3): 412-421.

ObjectiveTo 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.DesignWe 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.SettingENCOVID-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).ParticipantsMexicans 18 years or older who had a mobile telephone.ResultsELCSA 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.ConclusionsTelephone surveys were a feasible strategy to monitor reductions in food security during the COVID-19 lockdown.

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