Food Environment Inequalities and Moderating Effects of Obesity on Their Relationships with COVID-19 in Chicago

Hao Huang
Additional contact information
Hao Huang: Department of Social Sciences, Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, IL 60616, USA

Sustainability, 2022, vol. 14, issue 11, 1-17

Abstract: The COVID-19 outbreak has raised challenges for people with health problems. Obesity is a global issue related to COVID-19. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) finds that obesity worsens COVID-19 outcomes. As body mass index increases, the COVID-19 death risk increases. Additionally, due to different restriction policies, the pandemic has transformed our food environment. Thus, it is important to develop an antivirus-enabled paradigm to decrease the COVID-19 spreading rate in neighborhoods with obesity concerns and design a sustainable and healthy food environment. It is found that both COVID-19 and obesity inequalities are associated with food environment inequalities, but few studies have examined the moderating effects of obesity and food environment on COVID-19. According to the Chicago Department of Public Health, more than 30% of the Chicago adult population is obese. Additionally, Chicago has 340,676 COVID-19 cases during the period between 1 March 2020 and 26 November 2021. This study uses regression models to examine the moderating effects of obesity and food environment on COVID-19 in Chicago. Besides food environment factors, green spaces and transportation access are considered. The results show COVID-19 is concentrated in areas with a high obesity rate and low food access. A 1 percent increase in obesity rate is associated with a 2.83 percent increase in COVID-19 death rate in a community. Additionally, the moderating effects of obesity on the association between food environment and COVID-19 are shown in the results.

Keywords: COVID-19; food environment; obesity; urban health inequality (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/11/6498/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/11/6498/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:14:y:2022:i:11:p:6498-:d:824500

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().