PDF(Pubmed)
Abstract：
The COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically altered people\'s lives in multiple aspects, including grocery shopping behaviors. Yet, the changing trend of grocery shopping frequencies during the COVID-19 and its associations with food deserts remain unclear. We aimed to (1) examine variations of grocery shopping frequencies at county level in the USA during the COVID-19 pandemic from March 2020 to December 2021; (2) investigate associations between grocery shopping frequencies and food deserts during the COVID-19 pandemic; and (3) explore heterogeneity in grocery shopping frequencies-food desert associations across urban and rural areas. The county-level grocery shopping frequencies were derived from a grocery pattern dataset obtained from SafeGraph. We divided the 22-month period into 5 stages and employed the growth curve modeling to estimate the trajectories of grocery shopping frequencies and the associations between grocery shopping frequencies and food deserts in each stage, separately. Results revealed that grocery shopping frequencies experienced a \"W-shaped\" pattern from March 2020 to December 2021. Counties with the least percent of food deserts had slower decrease in grocery shopping frequencies at the initial stage and recovered more rapidly at later stages. Counties with the highest percent of food deserts were subject to deprivation amplification as a result of the pandemic. We also found differences existed in the grocery shopping frequencies-food desert associations between metropolitan counties and rural counties. Our findings suggest the impacts of COVID-19 on grocery shopping frequencies varied across different time periods, shedding light on designing different strategies to reduce the risk of contagion while shopping inside of grocery stores. Further, our findings highlight an urgent need to help people living in food deserts (especially in rural counties) to procure healthy foods safely during health emergencies like COVID-19 pandemic which disrupt mobility and social behaviors.
摘要：
COVID-19大流行在多个方面极大地改变了人们的生活，包括杂货店购物行为。然而，COVID-19期间杂货店购物频率的变化趋势及其与食物沙漠的关系尚不清楚。我们的目标是(1)研究2020年3月至2021年12月COVID-19大流行期间美国县级杂货店购物频率的变化；(2)调查COVID-19大流行期间杂货店购物频率与食品沙漠之间的关联；(3)探索城市和农村地区杂货店购物频率-食品沙漠协会的异质性。县级杂货店购物频率来自从SafeGraph获得的杂货店模式数据集。Wedividedthe22-monthperiodinto5stagesandusedthegrowthcurvemodelingtoestimatethetransporiesofgrowingshoppingfrequenciesandtheassociationbetweengrowardgrowingshoppingfrequenciesandfoodshortsineachstage,分开。结果显示，从2020年3月到2021年12月，杂货店购物频率经历了“W形”模式。食物沙漠百分比最少的县在最初阶段的杂货店购物频率下降较慢，而在后期阶段恢复更快。由于大流行，粮食沙漠比例最高的县受到剥夺的扩大。我们还发现，大城市县和农村县之间的杂货店购物频率-食品沙漠协会存在差异。我们的研究结果表明，COVID-19对杂货店购物频率的影响在不同时间段有所不同，在杂货店内购物时，设计不同的策略以降低传染风险。Further,我们的研究结果强调，在像COVID-19大流行这样的突发健康事件中，迫切需要帮助生活在食品沙漠中的人们(尤其是农村县)安全地采购健康食品。
