Finding out fast about the impact of Covid-19: The need for policy-relevant methodological innovation

Application of the Policy Regime Framework to understand COVID-19 policy response in the Southeast U.S.: How RAPID research can provide lessons learned after a public health crisis

Quick-response research during a time of crisis is important because time-sensitive findings can inform urgent decision-making, even with limited research budgets. This research, a National Science Foundation-funded Rapid Response Research (RAPID), explores the United States (U.S.) government's messaging on science in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, and how this messaging informed policy. Using rapidly emerging secondary data (e.g., policy documents taken from government websites and others), much of which has since been removed or changed, we examined the interactions between governing bodies, non-governmental organizations, and civilian populations in the Southeastern U.S. during the first 2 years of the pandemic. This research helps to better understand how decision-makers at the federal, state, and local levels responded to the pandemic in three states with the lowest vaccine rates and highest levels of poverty, income inequality, and disproportionate impacts borne by people of color in the nation: Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi. This study incorporates the Policy Regime Framework to discuss how two foundational concepts (ideas and institutions) helped govern policy implementation during the COVID-19 pandemic. This research fills a significant information gap by providing a better understanding of how policy regimes emerge across multiple levels of government and impact vulnerable populations during times of a public health crisis. We use automated text analysis to make sense of a large quantity of textual data from policy-making agencies. Our case study is the first to use the Policy Regime Framework in conjunction with empirical data, as it emerged, from federal, state, and local governments to analyze the U.S. policy response to COVID-19. We found the U.S. policy response included two distinct messaging periods in the U.S. during the COVID-19 pandemic: pre and post-vaccine. Many messaging data sources (agency websites, public service announcements, etc). have since been changed since we collected them, thus our real-time RAPID research enabled an accurate snapshot of a policy response in a crisis. We also found that there were significant differences in the ways that federal, state, and local governments approached communicating complex ideas to the public in each period. Thus, our RAPID research demonstrates how significant policy regimes are enacted and how messaging from these regimes can impact vulnerable populations.

Contraceptive and pregnancy concerns in the UK during the first COVID-19 lockdown: A rapid study

OBJECTIVES

COVID-19 resulted in significant disruption to sexual and reproductive health (SRH) services globally and the impact of this remains under explored. This study aimed to explore the impact of COVID-19 on SRH during the initial weeks of the first UK lockdown.

DESIGN

This rapid study employed a cross-sectional anonymous survey design. Between 9th April and 4th May 2020, participants completed an online questionnaire around the impacts of COVID-19 on SRH. The survey was completed by 194 participants. The findings in this paper, report on data from closed and free text questions from 32% (n = 62) of the total sample who said they were able to get pregnant.

RESULTS

Participants raised concerns around reduced access to, or a denial of, SRH services as well as reduced choice when such services were available. Participants felt their right to access SRH care was impinged and there were anxieties around the impact of COVID-19 on maternal and foetal health.

CONCLUSIONS

The study contributes to a better understanding of the concerns, during the first 8 weeks of the UK lockdown, of those who could get pregnant. Policy makers and planners must ensure that SRH policy, that recognises the importance of bodily autonomy and rights, is central to pandemic planning and responses both in the UK and globally. Such policies should ensure the immediate implementation of protocols that protect SRH service delivery, alongside informing service users of both their right to access such care and how to do so. Further work is necessary with members from minority communities who are mostly absent from this study to explore if, and how, COVID-19 may have exacerbated already existing disparities.

A catalyst for change: Developing a collaborative reflexive ethnographic approach to research with hospital doctors during the COVID-19 pandemic

The understanding of what ethnography looks like, and its purpose, is continuously evolving. COVID-19 posed a significant challenge to ethnographers, particularly those working in health-related research. Researchers have developed alternative forms of ethnography to overcome some of these challenges; we developed the Mobile Instant Messaging Ethnography (MIME) adaptation to ethnography in 2021 to overcome restrictions to our own research with hospital doctors. However, for ethnographic innovations to make a substantial contribution to methodology, they should not simply be borne of necessity, but of a dedicated drive to expand paradigms of research, to empower participant groups and to produce change - in local systems, in participant-collaborators and in researchers and the research process itself. In this paper, we reflect on our experiences using MIME, involving collaborative remote observation and reflection with 28 hospital doctors in Ireland from June to December 2021. After reviewing literature on ethnography in COVID-19 and general epistemological developments in ethnography, we detail the MIME approach and illustrate how MIME presents an evolution of the ethnographic approach, not only practically but in terms of its reflexive shift, its connected and co-creative foundations, and its ability to drive change in research approaches, participant life-worlds and real-world improvement.

COVID-19 Lockdown and Exposure of Households to Food Insecurity in Uganda: Insights from a National High Frequency Phone Survey

We estimate the impact of COVID-19 lockdown induced income shocks on household food insecurity outcomes in Uganda using five rounds of a nationally representative High Frequency Phone Survey. Relative to the baseline survey conducted just before the pandemic, there was a significant decrease in households' participation in wage work, agricultural production, and non-farm business which in turn increased their income losses. Consequently, we find that lockdown induced income losses significantly increased incidences of food insecurity within households. With incidences of food insecurity increasing especially in rural areas, it is likely that COVID-19 reversed some of the gains recorded in recent years in lifting millions of rural smallholder farming households out of poverty. These results suggest that to assure the food security of poorer segments of the population especially in anticipation of future shocks, the government needs to invest more in social protection i.e., income and consumption support.