A Price Too High: Injury and Assault among Delivery Gig Workers in New York City.

The occupational health burden and mechanisms that link gig work to health are understudied. We described injury and assault prevalence among food delivery gig workers in New York City (NYC) and assessed the effect of job dependence on injury and assault through work-related mechanisms and across transportation modes (electric bike and moped versus car). Data were collected through a 2022 survey commissioned by the NYC Department of Consumer and Worker Protection among delivery gig workers between October and December 2021 in NYC. We used modified Poisson regression models to estimate the adjusted prevalence rate ratio associations between job dependence and injury and assault. Of 1650 respondents, 66.9% reported that food delivery gig work was their main or only job (i.e., fully dependent). About 21.9% and 20.8% of respondents reported being injured and assaulted, respectively. Injury and assault were more than twice as prevalent among two-wheeled drivers, in comparison to car users. Fully dependent respondents had a 1.61 (95% confidence interval (CI) 1.20, 2.16) and a 1.36 (95% CI 1.03, 1.80) times greater prevalence of injury and assault, respectively, than partially dependent respondents after adjusting for age, sex, race and ethnicity, language, employment length, transportation mode, and weekly work hours. These findings suggest that fully dependent food delivery gig workers, especially two-wheeled riders, are highly vulnerable to the negative consequences of working conditions under algorithmic management by the platforms. Improvements to food delivery gig worker health and safety are urgently needed, and company narratives surrounding worker autonomy and flexibility need to be revisited.

From multiple streams to a torrent: A case study of food policymaking and innovations in New York during the COVID-19 emergency.

The COVID-19 pandemic has had significant effects on urban and regional food systems. Local administrations worldwide have been challenged to design and implement policies to mitigate immediate food system disruptions while planning for longer-term equity and resilience. The fast pace and high degree of uncertainty of the pandemic have made systematic tracking and assessment of food system change and related policy responses arduous. To address this gap, this paper applies the multilevel perspective on sociotechnical transitions and the multiple streams framework on policy change to 16 months of food policy (March 2020 through June 2021) during the New York State-issued COVID-19 state of emergency, comprising more than 300 food policies advanced by New York City and State legislators and administrators. Content analysis of these policies revealed the most salient policy areas during this period, the status of legislation, and key programs and budget allocations, as well as local food governance and the organizational spaces within which food policy operates. The paper shows that food policy domains that gained prominence focused on support for food businesses and food workers and on ensuring and expanding food access through food security and nutrition policies. Most COVID-19 food policies were incremental and were limited to the duration of the emergency, yet the crisis allowed for enactment of novel policies that deviated from the common policy issues or the typical scale of changes proposed pre-pandemic. Taken together, and viewed through a multilevel and policy streams framework, the findings provide insight into the trajectory of food policymaking in New York during the pandemic and the areas that food justice activists, researchers, and policy makers should focus on as the COVID-19 pandemic is abated.

Food production and resource use of urban farms and gardens: a five-country study.

There is a lack of data on resources used and food produced at urban farms. This hampers attempts to quantify the environmental impacts of urban agriculture or craft policies for sustainable food production in cities. To address this gap, we used a citizen science approach to collect data from 72 urban agriculture sites, representing three types of spaces (urban farms, collective gardens, individual gardens), in five countries (France, Germany, Poland, United Kingdom, and United States). We answered three key questions about urban agriculture with this unprecedented dataset: (1) What are its land, water, nutrient, and energy demands? (2) How productive is it relative to conventional agriculture and across types of farms? and (3) What are its contributions to local biodiversity? We found that participant farms used dozens of inputs, most of which were organic (e.g., manure for fertilizers). Farms required on average 71.6 L of irrigation water, 5.5 L of compost, and 0.53 m2 of land per kilogram of harvested food. Irrigation was lower in individual gardens and higher in sites using drip irrigation. While extremely variable, yields at well-managed urban farms can exceed those of conventional counterparts. Although farm type did not predict yield, our cluster analysis demonstrated that individually managed leisure gardens had lower yields than other farms and gardens. Farms in our sample contributed significantly to local biodiversity, with an average of 20 different crops per farm not including ornamental plants. Aside from clarifying important trends in resource use at urban farms using a robust and open dataset, this study also raises numerous questions about how crop selection and growing practices influence the environmental impacts of growing food in cities. We conclude with a research agenda to tackle these and other pressing questions on resource use at urban farms. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s13593-022-00859-4.

Roles of Cities in Creating Healthful Food Systems.

Over the past several decades, cities worldwide have attempted to reconfigure their food systems to improve public health, advance social justice, and promote environmental resilience using diverse municipal policies, often with the support of stakeholder-led governance mechanisms such as food policy councils. This article reviews the roles that cities have played in creating healthful urban food systems and the effects of those policies on public health. It explains that despite wide-ranging policy initiatives, disparities in food insecurity and malnourishment persist. It concludes by describing several promising pathways for urban food policy: engaging in food-focused urban planning to create equitable food environments; treating policies to address inequality and social justice as upstream food policies; considering the effects of new business models such as online food retail in urban food policy making; and using food procurement as a lever to influence regional, national, and global food systems.

SNAP at the Community Scale: How Neighborhood Characteristics Affect Participation and Food Access.

Cities are spatially diverse, with enclaves of particular demographic groups, clusters of businesses, and pockets of low-income individuals living amid affluence.This essay presents data from New York City to illustrate the importance of measuring and addressing neighborhood characteristics that affect Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) participation and the purchasing power of SNAP benefits: pockets of "eligible-but-not-enrolled" individuals, proximity between SNAP participants and jobs, and variations in food prices across neighborhoods.It concludes with 5 examples of how addressing these community-scale issues can increase SNAP participation and food access.

Workers' Health under Algorithmic Management: Emerging Findings and Urgent Research Questions.

Algorithms are increasingly used instead of humans to perform core management functions, yet public health research on the implications of this phenomenon for worker health and well-being has not kept pace with these changing work arrangements. Algorithmic management has the potential to influence several dimensions of job quality with known links to worker health, including workload, income security, task significance, schedule stability, socioemotional rewards, interpersonal relations, decision authority, and organizational trust. To describe the ways algorithmic management may influence workers' health, this review summarizes available literature from public health, sociology, management science, and human-computer interaction studies, highlighting the dimensions of job quality associated with work stress and occupational safety. We focus on the example of work for platform-based food and grocery delivery companies; these businesses are growing rapidly worldwide and their effects on workers and policies to address those effects have received significant attention. We conclude with a discussion of research challenges and needs, with the goal of understanding and addressing the effects of this increasingly used technology on worker health and health equity.

Food Insecurity During the First Year of COVID-19: Employment and Sociodemographic Factors Among Participants in the CHASING COVID Cohort Study.

OBJECTIVE: While much has been reported about the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on food insecurity, longitudinal data and the variability experienced by people working in various industries are limited. This study aims to further characterize people experiencing food insecurity during the pandemic in terms of employment, sociodemographic characteristics, and degree of food insecurity. METHODS: The study sample consisted of people enrolled in the Communities, Households and SARS-CoV-2 Epidemiology (CHASING) COVID Cohort Study from visit 1 (April-July 2020) through visit 7 (May-June 2021). We created weights to account for participants with incomplete or missing data. We used descriptive statistics and logistic regression models to determine employment and sociodemographic correlates of food insecurity. We also examined patterns of food insecurity and use of food support programs. RESULTS: Of 6740 participants, 39.6% (n = 2670) were food insecure. Non-Hispanic Black and Hispanic (vs non-Hispanic White) participants, participants in households with children (vs no children), and participants with lower (vs higher) income and education levels had higher odds of food insecurity. By industry, people employed in construction, leisure and hospitality, and trade, transportation, and utilities industries had the highest prevalence of both food insecurity and income loss. Among participants reporting food insecurity, 42.0% (1122 of 2670) were persistently food insecure (≥4 consecutive visits) and 43.9% (1172 of 2670) did not use any food support programs. CONCLUSIONS: The pandemic resulted in widespread food insecurity in our cohort, much of which was persistent. In addition to addressing sociodemographic disparities, future policies should focus on the needs of those working in industries vulnerable to economic disruption and ensure those experiencing food insecurity can access food support programs for which they are eligible.

Google-truthing to assess hot spots of food retail change: A repeat cross-sectional Street View of food environments in the Bronx, New York.

Google Street View (GSV) images can be used to "ground-truth" current and historical food retail data from approximately 2007 - when GSV was launched in a few US cities - to the present, facilitating analyses of food environments over time. A review of GSV images of all food retailers listed in a government database of licensed establishments in the Bronx, New York enabled records to be verified, businesses classified, and retail change quantified. The data revealed several trends likely to affect food access and health: increasing overall numbers of food retailers; the growth of dollar stores; and numerous openings, closings, and ownership changes across all food retail segments. Hot spot analysis identified statistically significant clusters of new dollar stores and bodegas, purveyors of less healthy processed foods, in lower-income neighborhoods in the South Bronx that face elevated rates of diet-related diseases. This article demonstrates the benefits and limitations of using GSV to conduct "virtual" food environment research.

Design Thinking to Improve Implementation of Public Health Interventions: An Exploratory Case Study on Enhancing Park Use.

Design thinking, a human-centred, iterative process to innovate solutions aligned with communities' tacit knowledge, has the potential to augment public health interventions. This paper presents a case study of a design thinking workshop to illustrate the process and methods to train public health researchers. A workshop was conducted to engage participants in a systematic, non-linear process of design thinking to design possible interventions to enhance use of renovated New York City parks. Participants engaged in exercises to rapidly craft proposals for park re-design. The process involved learning about design methods to overcome limitations of linear thinking and how design thinking can be applied to public health problems that require community input. The case study demonstrated the feasibility of training public health researchers in design thinking methods that can be applied to public health problems. With increased capacity, public health researchers could apply design thinking to community collaborations to develop solutions embedded in the unique contexts of the community.

The everyday food practices of community-dwelling Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) older adults.

Malnutrition during old age is a significant public health issue. Prevailing behavioral and structural senior malnutrition interventions have had marginal success, largely failing to reflect the realities of people's daily lives. This novel study employed Social Practice Theory (SPT) to explore the food practices of an under-researched, yet highly vulnerable, segment of the older adult population-Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) seniors. Four focus groups were conducted with 31 older adult clients and volunteers at a national LGBT social service and advocacy organization. Findings revealed that food practices-far from being mere expressions of individuals' choices or immutable habits-are entities composed of meanings, materials, and competences that are structured as they are performed repeatedly in a social context. Gaining insight into how and why diverse older adults perform food practices in light of obstacles common to aging has important implications for senior nutrition program and policy development.