The COVID-19 pandemic and food insecurity in households with children: A systematic review

Anna Williams; Nisreen A. Alwan; Elizabeth Taylor; Dianna Smith; Nida Ziauddeen

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0308699

Peer Review History

Original SubmissionFebruary 20, 2024
2 Jul 2024 Decision Letter - George N Chidimbah Munthali, Editor PONE-D-24-06499The COVID-19 pandemic and food insecurity in households with children: a systematic reviewPLOS ONE Dear Dr. Ziauddeen, Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process. Please submit your revised manuscript by Aug 16 2024 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file. 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We noted in your submission details that a portion of your manuscript may have been presented or published elsewhere. [An abstract of this work was accepted for a poster presentation at the Society for Social Medicine and Population Health Annual Scientific Meeting held in September 2023 and the submitted abstract was published in a supplement of the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health (https://jech.bmj.com/content/77/Suppl_1/A78.1).] Please clarify whether this [conference proceeding or publication] was peer-reviewed and formally published. If this work was previously peer-reviewed and published, in the cover letter please provide the reason that this work does not constitute dual publication and should be included in the current manuscript. 4. Please provide a complete Data Availability Statement in the submission form, ensuring you include all necessary access information or a reason for why you are unable to make your data freely accessible. If your research concerns only data provided within your submission, please write "All data are in the manuscript and/or supporting information files" as your Data Availability Statement. 5. Please include captions for your Supporting Information files at the end of your manuscript, and update any in-text citations to match accordingly. Please see our Supporting Information guidelines for more information: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/supporting-information. 6. Please review your reference list to ensure that it is complete and correct. If you have cited papers that have been retracted, please include the rationale for doing so in the manuscript text, or remove these references and replace them with relevant current references. Any changes to the reference list should be mentioned in the rebuttal letter that accompanies your revised manuscript. If you need to cite a retracted article, indicate the article’s retracted status in the References list and also include a citation and full reference for the retraction notice. Additional Editor Comments: Dear Dr Nida Ziaddeen I would like to inform you that your manuscript has undergone the first review process. Kindly would you address the comments by the reviewers and submit the revised manuscript with point to point answer. Regards George Munthali [Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.] Reviewers' comments: Reviewer's Responses to Questions Comments to the Author 1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions? The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented. Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes ******** 2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: N/A ****** 3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available? The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified. Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes ****** 4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English? PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here. Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes ****** 5. Review Comments to the Author Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters) Reviewer #1: This is a well researched and written paper. I found the methodology and results presentation well articulated. It would be interesting to look at the nutritional status in developing countries considering their vulnerability. Reviewer #2: Comments The manuscript presents a thorough systematic review of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on food insecurity in households with children in high-income countries. The review is well-structured, and the methodology appears rigorous. However, the inclusion criteria and exclusion criteria need to be explicitly stated to avoid any ambiguity. The conclusions drawn are generally supported by the data, but the narrative synthesis could benefit from a more detailed comparison of the methodologies and findings across the included studies. Statistical Analysis While the manuscript does not include original statistical analysis, it relies on the statistical results of the included studies. The use of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NIH) tool for quality assessment is appropriate. However, the manuscript should provide more detailed information on the statistical rigor of the included studies, such as sample sizes, control for confounding factors, and the robustness of their statistical methods. This will help in assessing the overall reliability of the review’s conclusions. The manuscript is generally well-written and presented in standard English. However, there are several instances of typographical and grammatical errors that need correction. For example, the use of symbols like "�" and "�" should be looed into. Additionally, some sentences are overly complex and could be simplified for better readability. Ensuring consistency in terminology and improving sentence structure will make the manuscript more accessible. Review General comments on the sections Introduction: The introduction provides a good overview of the background and significance of the study. However, it would benefit from a more detailed explanation of the conceptual framework guiding the review, particularly how the PICO framework was operationalized. Methods: The search strategy is comprehensive, but the inclusion and exclusion criteria should be more explicitly detailed. Additionally, the authors should provide more information on the process of quality assessment and how disagreements between reviewers were resolved. Results: The results are well-organized, but the presentation could be enhanced by including more detailed tables summarizing the characteristics and findings of the included studies. A meta-analysis, if feasible, could provide more robust quantitative synthesis. Discussion: The discussion appropriately contextualizes the findings within the broader literature. However, it should include a more critical analysis of the limitations of the included studies and the review itself. Suggestions for future research should be more specific, focusing on gaps identified in the current literature. Conclusion: The conclusion effectively summarizes the key findings but should be more concise. Emphasizing the practical implications of the findings for policymakers and practitioners would strengthen the manuscript. The manuscript’s strength lies in its comprehensive search strategy and inclusion of grey literature. However, the lack of diversity in the included studies, predominantly from the USA, limits the generalizability of the findings. The authors should consider this limitation and discuss its implications more thoroughly. The narrative review format is appropriate given the heterogeneity of the included studies, but a more detailed exploration of the methodological differences and their potential impact on the findings would be beneficial. Ethical considerations related to the inclusion of studies involving human participants should be explicitly addressed in the methods section. Overall, the manuscript addresses an importanttopic, but it requires some revisions to improve clarity, rigor, and comprehensiveness. ****** 6. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files. If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public. Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy. Reviewer #1: No Reviewer #2: No ******** [NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files.] While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/. PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email PLOS at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0308699.r001
Revision 1
27 Jul 2024 Author Response Journal requirements: Additional requirements: 1. Please ensure that your manuscript meets PLOS ONE's style requirements, including those for file naming. Thank you, we have followed the PLOS ONE style requirements for the revised version. 2. Thank you for stating the following financial disclosure: “The Wessex DIET study which this review formed part of is supported by the NIHR Applied Research Collaboration Wessex. The funder had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. The views and opinions expressed in this protocol are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the NIHR or the Department of Health and Social Care. For the purpose of Open Access, the author has applied a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) licence to any Author Accepted Manuscript version arising.” At this time, please address the following queries: a) Please clarify the sources of funding (financial or material support) for your study. List the grants or organizations that supported your study, including funding received from your institution. b) State what role the funders took in the study. If the funders had no role in your study, please state: “The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.” c) If any authors received a salary from any of your funders, please state which authors and which funders. EJT and NZ were d) If you did not receive any funding for this study, please state: “The authors received no specific funding for this work.” Please include your amended statements within your cover letter; we will change the online submission form on your behalf. Thank you, we have included the amended statement within our cover letter and the funding section in the manuscript. 3. We noted in your submission details that a portion of your manuscript may have been presented or published elsewhere. [An abstract of this work was accepted for a poster presentation at the Society for Social Medicine and Population Health Annual Scientific Meeting held in September 2023 and the submitted abstract was published in a supplement of the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health (https://jech.bmj.com/content/77/Suppl_1/A78.1).] Please clarify whether this [conference proceeding or publication] was peer-reviewed and formally published. If this work was previously peer-reviewed and published, in the cover letter please provide the reason that this work does not constitute dual publication and should be included in the current manuscript. The abstract was reviewed by the conference organising committee and scored (score not provided to authors) for decision making on acceptance of abstract to the conference programme. The authors received no peer review comments and the abstract was published as submitted in a supplement of the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health which is the usual practice for this conference accepted abstracts every year. This does not constitute dual publication as the conference abstract does not include the full methods, results and discussion included in the paper. Also the published abstract only includes the initial search and does not include the updated search. 4. Please provide a complete Data Availability Statement in the submission form, ensuring you include all necessary access information or a reason for why you are unable to make your data freely accessible. If your research concerns only data provided within your submission, please write "All data are in the manuscript and/or supporting information files" as your Data Availability Statement. Thank you, we have added the suggested sentence for research that concerns only data provided in our submission. 5. Please include captions for your Supporting Information files at the end of your manuscript, and update any in-text citations to match accordingly. Please see our Supporting Information guidelines for more information: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/supporting-information. The supporting information included are the PRISMA checklists required as part of the submission. There are no captions or in-text citations associated with this. 6. Please review your reference list to ensure that it is complete and correct. If you have cited papers that have been retracted, please include the rationale for doing so in the manuscript text, or remove these references and replace them with relevant current references. Any changes to the reference list should be mentioned in the rebuttal letter that accompanies your revised manuscript. If you need to cite a retracted article, indicate the article’s retracted status in the References list and also include a citation and full reference for the retraction notice. Thank you, we have reviewed the reference list as suggested. Additional Editor Comments: I would like to inform you that your manuscript has undergone the first review process. Kindly would you address the comments by the reviewers and submit the revised manuscript with point to point answer. Thank you, point to point answer to reviewers comments included below. Reviewers' comments: Reviewer #1: This is a well researched and written paper. I found the methodology and results presentation well articulated. It would be interesting to look at the nutritional status in developing countries considering their vulnerability. Thank you for the feedback. We agree that it would be interesting to look at the status in developing countries but this was out of the scope of this review. Reviewer #2: Comments The manuscript presents a thorough systematic review of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on food insecurity in households with children in high-income countries. The review is well-structured, and the methodology appears rigorous. However, the inclusion criteria and exclusion criteria need to be explicitly stated to avoid any ambiguity. The conclusions drawn are generally supported by the data, but the narrative synthesis could benefit from a more detailed comparison of the methodologies and findings across the included studies. Statistical Analysis While the manuscript does not include original statistical analysis, it relies on the statistical results of the included studies. The use of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NIH) tool for quality assessment is appropriate. However, the manuscript should provide more detailed information on the statistical rigor of the included studies, such as sample sizes, control for confounding factors, and the robustness of their statistical methods. This will help in assessing the overall reliability of the review’s conclusions. The manuscript is generally well-written and presented in standard English. However, there are several instances of typographical and grammatical errors that need correction. For example, the use of symbols like "�" and "�" should be looed into. Additionally, some sentences are overly complex and could be simplified for better readability. Ensuring consistency in terminology and improving sentence structure will make the manuscript more accessible. General comments on the sections Introduction: The introduction provides a good overview of the background and significance of the study. However, it would benefit from a more detailed explanation of the conceptual framework guiding the review, particularly how the PICO framework was operationalized. We used the following figure to conceptualise factors due to COVID-19 that may have impacted prevalence of food insecurity. However, we did not include this in the manuscript as did not think it was needed. We are happy to include as a supplementary figure if the reviewer thinks it would be relevant to do so. We are not entirely sure what the reviewer means by operationalising the PICO framework. We used the PICO framework to identify the population, intervention and control group and the outcome of interest to develop the research question. Methods: The search strategy is comprehensive, but the inclusion and exclusion criteria should be more explicitly detailed. Additionally, the authors should provide more information on the process of quality assessment and how disagreements between reviewers were resolved. Thank you, we have added Table 1 to explicitly detail the inclusion and exclusion criteria. We have included details of the quality assessment in the methods section. Both reviewers independently assessed quality of each study and then resolved any disagreements through discussion. Results: The results are well-organized, but the presentation could be enhanced by including more detailed tables summarizing the characteristics and findings of the included studies. A meta-analysis, if feasible, could provide more robust quantitative synthesis. Thank you, we have included the characteristics and findings of the included studies in Tables 3 and 4 and Fig 2. We believe we have captured all the relevant information in these tables but are happy to look into adding additional information (if available) if the reviewer could clarify the further details that would be helpful to include. A meta-analysis was not feasible due to the heterogeneity of the included studies and thus was not included in the analysis. Discussion: The discussion appropriately contextualizes the findings within the broader literature. However, it should include a more critical analysis of the limitations of the included studies and the review itself. Suggestions for future research should be more specific, focusing on gaps identified in the current literature. Thank you, we have added a paragraph on limitations of the included studies. Limitations of the review itself are considered in the discussion section. The fourth paragraph in the discussion focused on suggestions for future research which are based on the gaps identified in the literature and we have added two further points. Conclusion: The conclusion effectively summarizes the key findings but should be more concise. Emphasizing the practical implications of the findings for policymakers and practitioners would strengthen the manuscript. Thank you, we have added wording around the practical implications of the findings. The manuscript’s strength lies in its comprehensive search strategy and inclusion of grey literature. However, the lack of diversity in the included studies, predominantly from the USA, limits the generalizability of the findings. The authors should consider this limitation and discuss its implications more thoroughly. We have considered these in the limitations section. The narrative review format is appropriate given the heterogeneity of the included studies, but a more detailed exploration of the methodological differences and their potential impact on the findings would be beneficial. Ethical considerations related to the inclusion of studies involving human participants should be explicitly addressed in the methods section. Thank you, we have not addressed ethical consideration in the methods section as all the data included in this review was published and thus the review itself did not require ethical approval. Overall, the manuscript addresses an important topic, but it requires some revisions to improve clarity, rigor, and comprehensiveness. Thank you, we have revised and provided responses to the comments provided. Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: SR-COVID19-Response-to-reviewers.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0308699.r002
30 Jul 2024 Decision Letter - George N Chidimbah Munthali, Editor The COVID-19 pandemic and food insecurity in households with children: a systematic review PONE-D-24-06499R1 Dear Dr. Nida Ziauddeen, PhD We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements. Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication. An invoice will be generated when your article is formally accepted. Please note, if your institution has a publishing partnership with PLOS and your article meets the relevant criteria, all or part of your publication costs will be covered. Please make sure your user information is up-to-date by logging into Editorial Manager at Editorial Manager® and clicking the ‘Update My Information' link at the top of the page. If you have any questions relating to publication charges, please contact our Author Billing department directly at authorbilling@plos.org. If your institution or institutions have a press office, please notify them about your upcoming paper to help maximize its impact. If they’ll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team as soon as possible -- no later than 48 hours after receiving the formal acceptance. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information, please contact onepress@plos.org. Kind regards, George N Chidimbah Munthali Academic Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0308699.r003
Formally Accepted
31 Jul 2024 Acceptance Letter - George N Chidimbah Munthali, Editor PONE-D-24-06499R1 PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Ziauddeen, I'm pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been deemed suitable for publication in PLOS ONE. Congratulations! Your manuscript is now being handed over to our production team. At this stage, our production department will prepare your paper for publication. This includes ensuring the following: * All references, tables, and figures are properly cited * All relevant supporting information is included in the manuscript submission, * There are no issues that prevent the paper from being properly typeset If revisions are needed, the production department will contact you directly to resolve them. If no revisions are needed, you will receive an email when the publication date has been set. At this time, we do not offer pre-publication proofs to authors during production of the accepted work. Please keep in mind that we are working through a large volume of accepted articles, so please give us a few weeks to review your paper and let you know the next and final steps. Lastly, if your institution or institutions have a press office, please let them know about your upcoming paper now to help maximize its impact. If they'll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team within the next 48 hours. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information, please contact onepress@plos.org. If we can help with anything else, please email us at customercare@plos.org. Thank you for submitting your work to PLOS ONE and supporting open access. Kind regards, PLOS ONE Editorial Office Staff on behalf of Mr George N Chidimbah Munthali Academic Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0308699.r004

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