Access to food and health care during the COVID-19 pandemic by disability status in the United States

Abstract

Background The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted people’s access to food and health care. People with disabilities may be disproportionately affected by these outcomes due to structural and social barriers. Objective/Hypothesis To examine the relative prevalence of food insufficiency and unmet health care needs among U.S. residents by vision, hearing, cognition, and mobility disability. Methods We used data from the Household Pulse Survey wave conducted from April 14, to April 26, 2021, when questions about functional disability were first included. Participants were asked about difficulty seeing, hearing, remembering or concentrating, and walking or climbing stairs. The outcomes of interest were food insufficiency, delaying needed medical care and not getting needed medical care. Poisson regression models with robust variance adjusted for potential confounders were used to examine the prevalence ratio of each of these outcomes by disability status in separate models for each type of disability. Results During April 14-26, 2021, 39.5% adults in the U.S. reported cognitive disability, 30.8% reported vision disability, 23.2% reported mobility disability, and 14.9% reported hearing disability. Adults with any type of disability were more likely than those without to experience food insufficiency (range of prevalence rate ratios [PRR]: 1.67-1.96), and delay (range of PRR: 1.48-1.87) or not get (range of PRR: 1.60-2.07) needed medical care. Conclusions These disparities suggest there is an urgent need to address the negative impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on people with disabilities. The prioritization of disability data collection is key in achieving that goal.

Understanding the Mental Health Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic Among Individuals With Chronic Illness

“…Related, a documented increase in domestic violence and decreased mobility during the initial months of COVID-19 resulted in greater daily exposure to and experiences of stressful home environments ( Dalise et al, 2021 ; Lund, 2020 ; Turk & McDermott, 2020 ). In this vein, these data are consistent with growing evidence that persons with disability broadly reported experiencing greater social isolation and greater material stressors during the COVID-19 pandemic compared to non-disabled adults ( Assi et al, 2022 ; Boyle et al, 2020 ; Dalise et al, 2021 ; Sabatello et al, 2020 ).…”

Psychosocial Impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Women with Spinal Cord Injury

“…Although many reported serious negative impacts, at the time of this study, respondents appeared to have been spared other significant, if not life threatening, difficulties experienced by other people with disabilities. For example, while others reported food insecurities during the pandemic [41,42], none of our respondents identified food scarcity as a problem. Since our sample of women had the resources to participate in an online study, perhaps they also had the financial advantages to secure food.…”

The COVID-19 Pandemic Enhanced the Decade-Long Trend of the Decreasing Utilization of Antibiotics

“…However, regardless of the extent to which the pre-pandemic development and the decline in the incidence of infectious diseases might have influenced the profound reduction in AB prescriptions in 2020, there are a number of other factors that could be responsible for the development observed. It could also be speculated that the factors described above, such as limited access to medical care and changes in individual care-seeking behaviors during the pandemic, are responsible for the marked decline in AB prescriptions in 2021 that was detected in our study [28][29][30][31][32][33].…”