A Systematic Review of Studies on Public Health Status during the COVID-19 Pandemic by Visualizing their Structure using Co-Occurrence and VOSviewer Software

Abstract

Abstract Background Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 epidemic, many public health issues have arisen. However, based on bibliometric analyses, little attention has been paid to overall trends in this area. This study sought to describe the status of public health events in the COVID-19 pandemic using systematic review of high-quality research evidence, thereby revealing the trend of public health during COVID-19, research hotspots, and provide lessons and references for future research in the field of public health emergencies. Methods Co-Occurrence and VOSviewer bibliometric methods were used to analyze the literature related to the public health during COVID-19 in the Web of Science (WOS) core database. The public health characteristics during the COVID-19 pandemic were explored by analyzing the number of publications, countries, institutions, and keywords. Results This study included 1911 original research articles and reviews in English on public health issues during the pandemic. The United States, China, and England are the main forces in this field, and they collaborate closely with each other. Research institutions in each country are dominated by universities, with the University of Toronto being the most productive institution in the world. The authors with most publications are Larson, Looi, and Neumark-sztainer. Visual analysis shows that the main focus of research are characteristics of the COVID-19 pandemic, problems encountered by Citizens during the COVID-19 pandemic and responses to Public Health issues during the COVID-19 pandemic. Conclusions These results reveal emerging research on public health issues during the COVID-19 pandemic, especially the impacts caused by the pandemic on public health determinants.