Abstract
Urban nature—such as greenness and parks—can alleviate distress and provide space for safe recreation during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, nature is often less available in low-income populations and communities of colour—the same communities hardest hit by COVID-19. In analyses of two datasets, we quantified inequity in greenness and park proximity across all urbanized areas in the United States and linked greenness and park access to COVID-19 case rates for ZIP codes in 17 states. Areas with majority persons of colour had both higher case rates and less greenness. Furthermore, when controlling for sociodemographic variables, an increase of 0.1 in the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index was associated with a 4.1% decrease in COVID-19 incidence rates (95% confidence interval: 0.9–6.8%). Across the United States, block groups with lower income and majority persons of colour are less green and have fewer parks. Our results demonstrate that the communities most impacted by COVID-19 also have the least nature nearby. Given that urban nature is associated with both human health and biodiversity, these results have far-reaching implications both during and beyond the pandemic.
Highlights
The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed many existing inequalities in the United States
In simultaneous autoregressive models (SAR) that account for spatial autocorrelation the proportion people of colour (POC) in a block group and median household income were both significant predictors of Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and park proximity (Extended Data Fig. 2)
We show that COVID-19 has inflicted the greatest burden on communities that face widespread inequity in nature access
Summary
The unprecedented impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, including upsets to daily life, economic loss and emotional distress, have fallen disproportionately on low-income populations and communities of colour[1,2,3,4] These same groups have faced greater exposure to COVID-19 through high public-contact jobs[5] that often make social distancing difficult or impossible and higher rates of cases as a result[1,2,6,7,8]. Reduced defence against viruses and other mechanisms could add burden to those already suffering from health inequities and could keep a higher proportion of cases subclinical or asymptomatic in areas with more nature This would result in a negative correlation between greenness and COVID-19 case rates that persists after accounting for sociodemographic characteristics and other factors that are likely to be related to both greenness and COVID-19. We quantify nature inequity across all census block groups in urbanized areas in the United States and link inequity in nature access to rates of COVID-19 cases for ZIP codes in 17 states using
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