Food insecurity during COVID-19: A multi-state research collaborative
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Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic has had profound impacts on the global food system, supply chain, and employment, which, in turn, has created numerous challenges to food access and food security. Early exploratory studies suggest significant increases in food insecurity in the United States. Comprehensive longitudinal research across multiple locations is needed to understand the range of impacts and responses at the household level and to improve preparedness for future events. This protocol paper outlines the formation of the N ational F ood A ccess and C OVID research T eam (NFACT), a collaborative, interdisciplinary, multi-state research effort that will utilize common measurement tools, codebooks, code, data aggregation tools, and outreach materials to collectively examine and communicate the effect of COVID-19 on household food access and security. NFACT is led by an executive committee of researchers from four institutions, with additional NFACT collaborating institutions across more than a dozen states. A survey was developed by the NFACT executive team in March 2020, with additional refinements in May 2020, using both existing validated questions and new original questions, which were piloted and validated in Vermont. The project provides suggestive guidance for recruitment, and is designed to allow each study site to adopt recruitment strategies that meet their budget and needs. Primary outcomes of interest include food security status, employment status, food access challenges and concerns, dietary intake, and use of food assistance programs. Additional outcomes assess emotional eating, stigma, COVID-19 perceptions and experiences, and pro-environmental purchasing behaviors. This protocol and the establishment of NFACT provide important advancements in COVID-19 and food security research by generating harmonized data and assessing comparable outcomes across geographies and time. The collaborative, open-source approach makes research tools available to teams who might not have the resources to design their own tools, and can enable streamlined data collection, large-scale comparative analyses, and cost savings through reduced administrative tasks. The project has contributed to building new networks between and within states. Enabling facilitation and implementation of instruments in study sites has provided flexibility and meaningful opportunity for local stakeholder engagement and relevant outreach for informed public health decision-making.
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SciScore for 10.1101/2020.12.01.20242024: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
Institutional Review Board Statement not detected. Randomization not detected. Blinding not detected. Power Analysis not detected. Sex as a biological variable not detected. Table 2: Resources
No key resources detected.
Results from OddPub: Thank you for sharing your code.
Results from LimitationRecognizer: An explicit section about the limitations of the techniques employed in this study was not found. We encourage authors to address study limitations.Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.
Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.
Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.
Results from rtransparent:- Th…
SciScore for 10.1101/2020.12.01.20242024: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
Institutional Review Board Statement not detected. Randomization not detected. Blinding not detected. Power Analysis not detected. Sex as a biological variable not detected. Table 2: Resources
No key resources detected.
Results from OddPub: Thank you for sharing your code.
Results from LimitationRecognizer: An explicit section about the limitations of the techniques employed in this study was not found. We encourage authors to address study limitations.Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.
Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.
Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.
Results from rtransparent:- Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
- Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
- No protocol registration statement was detected.
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