Children and COVID-19 Research Library

The sudden health and economic crisis brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic affords an opportunity to examine the impact of economic disruption to children and families. Any negative effects on the well-being of children are important to consider in relation to both short- and long-term outcomes. Using pre-pandemic and mid-pandemic waves of the longitudinal Growing Up in Ireland study, this study examined whether the impact of economic disruption was equivalent for families who were (or were not) financially vulnerable pre-pandemic. It then investigated whether economic disruption was associated with a negative effect on the emotional well-being of 12-year-olds, and if there was evidence for such a negative effect being mediated through a lack of material resources or strain on family dynamics.

COVID-19 has exacerbated the existing crisis that the vulnerable refugee population faces. More than a million Rohingya refugees live in Bangladesh. COVID-19 has affected both males and females. It is critical to understand how this population group is coping during this trying period. They are constituted by 52% women and 55% adolescents. The socioeconomic and physiological repercussions of the pandemic on the Rohingya people are contextualised in this study. The socioeconomic and health impacts of COVID-19 on Rohingya women and adolescents in Bangladesh are investigated. Because of the restrictions imposed, over 63% of Rohingya adolescent females suffered from food scarcity. The vast majority of respondents (87%) stated that they had reduced their meal frequency, resulting in a protein deficiency. Since their arrival in Bangladesh, they have had limited access to medical and educational facilities. The pandemic has further exacerbated the situation. Girls are more vulnerable to sexual and gender-based abuse, early marriage, school dropout, and pregnancy. This research aims to add to existing knowledge on refugees, Rohingya, women, and adolescents

The data on COVID-19 show an irrefutable and disturbing pattern: Black Americans are contracting and dying from COVID-19 at rates that far exceed other racial and ethnic groups. Due to historical and current iterations of racism, Black Americans have been forced into conditions that elevate their risk for COVID-19 and consequently place Black children at the epicenter of loss across multiple domains of life. The current paper highlights the impact of the pandemic on Black children at the individual, family, and school levels. Based on an understanding of the influence of structural racism on COVID-19 disparities, policy recommendations are provided that focus on equitable access to quality education, home ownership, and employment to fully address the needs of Black children and families during and after the pandemic. Research, practice, and policy recommendations are made to journal editors, funding agencies, grant review panels, and researchers regarding how research on COVID-19 should be framed to inform intervention efforts aimed at improving the situation of Black children and families.

Depression, perceived in terms of a health problem, is a disorder that spreads dynamically in the youth population. The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated the problem. The aim of the study was to assess the level of knowledge and the risk of depression in the environment of a selected group of young people in the initial period of the COVID-19 pandemic. The study group consisted of 100 people - school students aged 15-20 years. An original questionnaire and the Kutcher Depression Scale for Youth were used. Results: The level of knowledge of adolescents about the risk factors for depression and symptoms that may indicate depression is average. Young people acquire knowledge from the Internet (41%) and TV programs (16%). Symptoms of depression were more frequent in: older participants of the study, those who assessed their financial situation as low, and students who had experience of depression in their family.

This study examines whether the COVID-19 crisis affects women and men differently in terms of employment, working hours, and hourly wages, and whether the effects are demand or supply driven. COVID-19 impacts are studied using administrative data on all Dutch employees up to December 2020, focussing on the national lockdowns and emergency childcare for essential workers in the Netherlands. First, the impact of COVID-19 is much larger for non-essential workers than for essential workers. Although female non-essential workers are more affected than male non-essential workers, on average, women and men are equally affected, because more women than men are essential workers. Second, the impact for partnered essential workers with young children, both men and women, is not larger than for others. Third, single-parent essential workers respond with relatively large reductions in labour supply, suggesting emergency childcare was insufficient for them. Overall, labour demand effects appear larger than labour supply effects.

Echoing global trends, where the absolute number of displaced persons continues to grow in tandem with the proportion of people living in protracted displacement, the vast majority of both Syrian and Palestinian refugee communities in Lebanon have been there for 10 years or longer. So, how can decision-makers lay the foundations for gender-responsive education systems and economic empowerment for refugee youth in Lebanon? The collapse of Lebanon’s GDP by 58% during recent years has resulted not only in an explosion of demand for humanitarian assistance, but also created growing concerns about meeting SDG targets. Questions arise over how best to support adolescents and young people to transition into adulthood in the midst of such intertwined, and escalating, crises. This ODI Report began with an extensive review of secondary data, and uses primary qualitative data collected from Syrian and Palestinian refugees living in Lebanon over the first half of 2021. Our research aims to identify programming proposals and recommended actions for donor and policy-makers to facilitate the economic and educational success for all young refugees living permanently outside their country's borders.

Worldwide, more people are on the move now than ever before, yet many refugees and migrants face poorer health outcomes than the host populations. Addressing their health needs is, therefore, a global health priority and integral to the principle of the right to health for all. The key is to strengthen and maintain health systems by ensuring that they are refugee- and migrant-sensitive and inclusive. Health outcomes are influenced by a whole host of determinants. However, refugees and migrants face additional determinants such as precarious legal status; discrimination; social, cultural, linguistic, administrative and financial barriers; lack of information about health entitlements; low health literacy; and fear of detention and deportation. This groundbreaking publication outlines current and future opportunities and challenges and provides several strategies to improve the health and well-being of refugees and migrants. It is an advocacy tool for national and international policy-makers involved in health and migration.

Child labour is a worldwide issue with a major impact on access to education, Latin America being one of the regions heavily affected by this type of illegal activity, the data were not very encouraging and with the COVID19 pandemic the situation worsened. This study uses data, of 117,189 girls and boys between the ages of 5 and 14, obtained from National Survey of Employment, Unemployment and Underemployment (ENEMDU), with the aim to analyse education and child labour situation in Ecuador through pandemic in 2020, a complete descriptive analysis was developed in order to display the main differentiation criteria and the classification into groups of the people investigated, the results are confirmed by factor analysis.

The current study conducts an exploratory study on children’s emotional and physical health in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The direct and interactive effects of parental stress, family socioeconomic status (SES), and family support on child adjustment were investigated. A total of 116 children of varied socioeconomic and their parents were interviewed. Parents with low household income perceived greater distress related to uncertainty and health worries compared to those with higher household income. However, it was among high-SES families that parental distress was associated with child difficulties. At a multivariate level, children’s health was associated with SES, family support, and parental COVID-19 stress. Among families with low household income, when parents perceived low/average COVID-19 stress, family support worked as a protective factor for children’s adjustment. Understanding how COVID-19 relates with children’s emotional and physical health within families with low and high household income may help to inform recommendations for best practices, for example through family support interventions.

This document describes the process and methodology used to develop the Analytical Framework, explains the different components and provides guidance on how it can be adapted for its application to different contexts for specific nutrition outcomes.

Adolescent (cisgender) sexual minority males (ASMM) face multiple mental health disparities. Yet surprisingly little is known about use of mental health care among ASMM. The current study examined mental health care use among ASMM, both lifetime use and during the COVID-19 pandemic. ASMM (N = 154, ages 14–17 years) enrolled in Spring 2020 for a pilot randomized controlled trial of an online sexual health intervention. Participants were assessed at baseline and 3-month follow-up.

The COVID-19 pandemic and governments’ attempts to contain it are negatively affecting young children’s health and development in ways we are only beginning to understand and measure. Responses to the pandemic are driven largely by confining children and families to their homes. This study aims to assess the levels of and associated socioeconomic disparities in household preparedness for protecting young children under the age of five from being exposed to communicable diseases, such as COVID-19, in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Using data from nationally representative household surveys in 56 LMICs since 2016, we estimated the percentages of young children under the age of five living in households prepared for communicable diseases (e.g., COVID-19) and associated residential and wealth disparities at the country- and aggregate-level. Preparedness was defined on the basis of space for quarantine, adequacy of toilet facilities and hand hygiene, mass media exposure at least once a week, and phone ownership. Disparities within countries were measured as the absolute gap in two domains—household wealth and residential area - and compared across regions and country income groups.