Impact of an Arts-based Public Health Literacy Program Delivered Online to High School Students during the COVID-19 Pandemic.

The COVID-19 pandemic, coupled with the domestic socio-political unrest of 2020, provides a critical opportunity to reframe how we engage with youth around health and disease risk. The Bigger Picture (TBP), a spoken word, arts-based public health literacy campaign, uses a social justice and racial equity frame to activate youth around social determinants of health, including salient topics such as type 2 diabetes, COVID-19, climate change, and police violence. This quasi-experimental study determined the impact of providing an online adaptation of TBP during the COVID-19 pandemic to urban, low-income, diverse high school students (3 intervention schools assigned to receive TBP-based spoken word program; 3 comparison schools received a non-health focused spoken word program). We used outcomes derived from the Culture of Health framework, including: (1) health-related mind-sets and expectations; (2) sense of belonging; and (3) civic engagement. Students completed pre/post surveys; a subset of adults and youth from all 6 schools completed semi-structured interviews. TBP participation resulted in measurable shifts in students' mind-sets around structural drivers of health and health inequity and increases in plans for future civic engagement. Arts-based programming with an intentional focus on the social ecological model and health equity appears to impact young people, even when delivered online.

Retail prices of nutritious food rose more in countries with higher COVID-19 case counts.

The COVID-19 pandemic has curtailed lives and livelihoods, leading to price spikes for some foods and declines for others. We compare monthly retail food prices in up to 181 countries from January 2019 to June 2021, test for differences over time and find that average prices rose significantly, especially for more nutritious food groups in countries with higher COVID-19 case counts. Analysis of retail prices by food group complements data on farm commodity prices and overall consumer price indexes, helping to guide policy for resilience and response to shocks.