Abstract
Background: COVID-19 has imposed challenges for older adults to access food, particularly in minority, lower income, and rural communities. However, the impact of COVID-19 on food access, diet quality, and nutrition of diverse older adult populations has not been systematically assessed.Objective: To examine changes in food access, diet quality, and nutritional status among older adults during the COVID-19 pandemic and the potential differential impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on these nutrition-related outcomes using the framework of the socio-ecological model.Methods: An electronic search was conducted on 3 databases (PubMed, CINAHL, and Web of Science) on March 7, 2021. Original, peer-reviewed English-language studies published 10/1/2019–3/1/2021 were considered for which the mean age of participants was 50 years and older. In order to be considered, studies must have examined food access, food security, or nutrition constructs as an outcome.Results: The initial search yielded 13,628 results, of which 9,145 were duplicates. Of the remaining 4,483 articles, 13 articles were in scope and therefore selected in the final analysis, which can be characterized as descriptive (n = 5), analytical (n = 6), and correlational (n = 2). Studies were conducted among community-dwelling older adult populations (n = 7) as well as those temporarily residing in hospital settings (n = 6) in 10 countries. None of the in-scope studies examined the impact of food programs or specific public policies or disaggregated data by race/ethnicity.Conclusions: More research is needed to examine the impact of COVID-19 on food access/security and the differential barriers experienced by older adult populations.
Highlights
The direct impacts of COVID-19 on the health and well-being of older adults—in terms of morbidity, mortality, and social exclusion—has received worldwide recognition in academic research, news media coverage, and increasingly, policy action
Of the remaining 4,483 articles, 13 eligible articles were included in this review: 4,470 articles were excluded because they were not published in English (n = 15), they were published outside of the specified dates (n = 31), were not peer-reviewed or published (n = 18), did not analyze data at the individual level (n = 785), did not examine nutrition, food access, food security, and/or diet as a dependent variable in the analysis (n = 3,543), or the mean age of participants was below the age of 50 years and/or they did not have results specific to older adults (n = 78)
The studies were conducted among community-dwelling samples (n = 7) and those temporarily residing in hospitals (n = 6)
Summary
The direct impacts of COVID-19 on the health and well-being of older adults—in terms of morbidity, mortality, and social exclusion—has received worldwide recognition in academic research, news media coverage, and increasingly, policy action. Diet, Nutrition of Older Adults has received relatively little attention, despite the strong impact of diet quality on the health and longevity of older adult populations [1–3] These constraints are more likely to affect minority, lower-income, and rural older adult populations [4]. Cross-national studies suggest substantial heterogeneity within and between countries in dietary changes during the COVID-19 pandemic [12], with a trend toward more unhealthy consumption during confinement [13]. Among those studies citing differential impacts, diet quality has been found to vary according to socioeconomic factors [14], access to food [9, 15], and age [16]. The impact of COVID-19 on food access, diet quality, and nutrition of diverse older adult populations has not been systematically assessed
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