The COVID-19 pandemic has led to many disruptions and challenges in local and national food systems in America. Many farms and market gardens were forced to innovate quickly and take action to survive ongoing disruption as these businesses struggled with finances and distribution of products among other challenges. Many small-scale, local farming operations in particular were able to respond to these disruptions in unique ways, which may offer useful insight into how to better prepare small farming communities for public health and other kinds of disasters in the future. This pilot study aims to better understand how COVID-19 affected the local food system in the region of Northwest Arkansas in the mid-southern United States and how small-scale, direct-sales farmers responded to the pandemic, through a survey and interview about their experiences from 2019 to 2021. Participating farmers reported changes in farming procedures and challenges in owning or working on their farms due to ongoing climate-related environmental issues or issues specific to the pandemic, such as distributing products, utilizing financial and other resources of support, and partnering with local supply-chain partners and community members to ensure local businesses’ survival during COVID-19. This pilot study can provide insight into how local farming operations and their regional and smaller-scale supply chain partners have built and utilized community resilience strategies to survive COVID-19 challenges in the Northwest region of Arkansas. A statewide follow-up study will be conducted to observe how these producers navigated these challenges on a larger scale, including in different regions of Arkansas following the start of the pandemic.
Background
CenteringPregnancy (CP) has been expected to produce beneficial outcomes for women and their infants. However, previous studies paid little attention to testing variations in CP’s effects across women from different demographic groups. This study aimed to test how multiple demographic factors (obesity, race, ethnicity, marital status and socioeconomic status) moderate CP’s effects on health outcomes.
Methods
This study employed a quasi-experimental design. De-identified hospital birth data were collected from 216 CP participants and 1159 non-CP participants. We estimated the average treatment effect of CP on outcome variables as a baseline. Then we estimated the average marginal effect of CP by adding each of the moderating variables in regression adjustment models.
Results
CP produced salutary effects among those who were obese or overweight and unmarried as well as women with lower socioeconomic status. These salutary effects were also strengthened as maternal age increased. However, CP was ineffective for Hispanic/Latinx women.
Conclusions
CP produced more beneficial health outcomes for high-risk women such as obese, unmarried women and those with lower socioeconomic status. These are meaningful findings from a public health perspective.
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