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Assessing changes in the food retail environment during the COVID-19 pandemic: opportunities, challenges, and lessons learned
BACKGROUND: COVID-19 mitigation strategies have had an untold effect on food retail stores and restaurants. Early evidence from New York City (NYC) indicated that these strategies, among decreased travel from China and increased fears of viral transmission and xenophobia, were leading to mass closur...
Autores principales: | , , , , , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
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BioMed Central
2022
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9014275/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35436904 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12889-022-12890-x |
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author | Russo, Rienna G. Ali, Shahmir H. Mezzacca, Tamar Adjoian Radee, Ashley Chong, Stella Kranick, Julie Tsui, Felice Foster, Victoria Kwon, Simona C. Yi, Stella S. |
author_facet | Russo, Rienna G. Ali, Shahmir H. Mezzacca, Tamar Adjoian Radee, Ashley Chong, Stella Kranick, Julie Tsui, Felice Foster, Victoria Kwon, Simona C. Yi, Stella S. |
author_sort | Russo, Rienna G. |
collection | PubMed |
description | BACKGROUND: COVID-19 mitigation strategies have had an untold effect on food retail stores and restaurants. Early evidence from New York City (NYC) indicated that these strategies, among decreased travel from China and increased fears of viral transmission and xenophobia, were leading to mass closures of businesses in Manhattan’s Chinatown. The constantly evolving COVID −19 crisis has caused research design and methodology to fundamentally shift, requiring adaptable strategies to address emerging and existing public health problems such as food security that may result from closures of food outlets. OBJECTIVE: We describe innovative approaches used to evaluate changes to the food retail environment amidst the constraints of the pandemic in an urban center heavily burdened by COVID-19. Included are challenges faced, lessons learned and future opportunities. METHODS: First, we identified six diverse neighborhoods in NYC: two lower-resourced, two higher-resourced, and two Chinese ethnic enclaves. We then developed a census of food outlets in these six neighborhoods using state and local licensing databases. To ascertain the status (open vs. closed) of outlets pre-pandemic, we employed a manual web-scraping technique. We used a similar method to determine the status of outlets during the pandemic. Two independent online sources were required to confirm the status of outlets. If two sources could not confirm the status, we conducted phone call checks and/or in-person visits. RESULTS: The final baseline database included 2585 food outlets across six neighborhoods. Ascertaining the status of food outlets was more difficult in lower-resourced neighborhoods and Chinese ethnic enclaves compared to higher-resourced areas. Higher-resourced neighborhoods required fewer phone call and in-person checks for both restaurants and food retailers than other neighborhoods. CONCLUSIONS: Our multi-step data collection approach maximized safety and efficiency while minimizing cost and resources. Challenges in remote data collection varied by neighborhood and may reflect the different resources or social capital of the communities; understanding neighborhood-specific constraints prior to data collection may streamline the process. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12889-022-12890-x. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-9014275 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2022 |
publisher | BioMed Central |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-90142752022-04-18 Assessing changes in the food retail environment during the COVID-19 pandemic: opportunities, challenges, and lessons learned Russo, Rienna G. Ali, Shahmir H. Mezzacca, Tamar Adjoian Radee, Ashley Chong, Stella Kranick, Julie Tsui, Felice Foster, Victoria Kwon, Simona C. Yi, Stella S. BMC Public Health Research in Practice BACKGROUND: COVID-19 mitigation strategies have had an untold effect on food retail stores and restaurants. Early evidence from New York City (NYC) indicated that these strategies, among decreased travel from China and increased fears of viral transmission and xenophobia, were leading to mass closures of businesses in Manhattan’s Chinatown. The constantly evolving COVID −19 crisis has caused research design and methodology to fundamentally shift, requiring adaptable strategies to address emerging and existing public health problems such as food security that may result from closures of food outlets. OBJECTIVE: We describe innovative approaches used to evaluate changes to the food retail environment amidst the constraints of the pandemic in an urban center heavily burdened by COVID-19. Included are challenges faced, lessons learned and future opportunities. METHODS: First, we identified six diverse neighborhoods in NYC: two lower-resourced, two higher-resourced, and two Chinese ethnic enclaves. We then developed a census of food outlets in these six neighborhoods using state and local licensing databases. To ascertain the status (open vs. closed) of outlets pre-pandemic, we employed a manual web-scraping technique. We used a similar method to determine the status of outlets during the pandemic. Two independent online sources were required to confirm the status of outlets. If two sources could not confirm the status, we conducted phone call checks and/or in-person visits. RESULTS: The final baseline database included 2585 food outlets across six neighborhoods. Ascertaining the status of food outlets was more difficult in lower-resourced neighborhoods and Chinese ethnic enclaves compared to higher-resourced areas. Higher-resourced neighborhoods required fewer phone call and in-person checks for both restaurants and food retailers than other neighborhoods. CONCLUSIONS: Our multi-step data collection approach maximized safety and efficiency while minimizing cost and resources. Challenges in remote data collection varied by neighborhood and may reflect the different resources or social capital of the communities; understanding neighborhood-specific constraints prior to data collection may streamline the process. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12889-022-12890-x. BioMed Central 2022-04-18 /pmc/articles/PMC9014275/ /pubmed/35436904 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12889-022-12890-x Text en © The Author(s) 2022 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) ) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data. |
spellingShingle | Research in Practice Russo, Rienna G. Ali, Shahmir H. Mezzacca, Tamar Adjoian Radee, Ashley Chong, Stella Kranick, Julie Tsui, Felice Foster, Victoria Kwon, Simona C. Yi, Stella S. Assessing changes in the food retail environment during the COVID-19 pandemic: opportunities, challenges, and lessons learned |
title | Assessing changes in the food retail environment during the COVID-19 pandemic: opportunities, challenges, and lessons learned |
title_full | Assessing changes in the food retail environment during the COVID-19 pandemic: opportunities, challenges, and lessons learned |
title_fullStr | Assessing changes in the food retail environment during the COVID-19 pandemic: opportunities, challenges, and lessons learned |
title_full_unstemmed | Assessing changes in the food retail environment during the COVID-19 pandemic: opportunities, challenges, and lessons learned |
title_short | Assessing changes in the food retail environment during the COVID-19 pandemic: opportunities, challenges, and lessons learned |
title_sort | assessing changes in the food retail environment during the covid-19 pandemic: opportunities, challenges, and lessons learned |
topic | Research in Practice |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9014275/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35436904 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12889-022-12890-x |
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