Publications

Pandemic and human security: The impact of COVID-19 on communities in Medellín and proposals to address it

También en español: Pandemia y seguridad humana: Impactos del COVID-19 en las comunidades de Medellín y propuestas para afrontarlos 

Dr Alexandra Abello Colak (and others), 2021.

This report presents an analysis of the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic in some of the most populated and vulnerable communities in the Colombian city of Medellín. The authors also seek to contribute to a deeper understanding of the impact of the pandemic as well as offering ideas about how to advance towards recovery with a human security perspective.

Challenges in ensuring global access to COVID-19 vaccines: production, affordability, allocation, and deployment

Prof Ken Shadlen (and others), The Lancet, 2021.

The COVID-19 pandemic is unlikely to end until there is global roll-out of vaccines that protect against severe disease and preferably drive herd immunity. Regulators in numerous countries have authorised or approved COVID-19 vaccines for human use, with more expected to be licensed in 2021. Yet having licensed vaccines is not enough to achieve global control of COVID-19: they also need to be produced at scale, priced affordably, allocated globally so that they are available where needed, and widely deployed in local communities. In this Health Policy paper, we review potential challenges to success in each of these dimensions and discuss policy implications.

Do men and women 'lockdown' differently? An examination of Panama's COVID-19 sex-segregated social distancing policy

Dr Clare Wenham (with Liana Woskie), Feminist Economics, 2021.

"Through a retrospective analysis of global geographic positioning (GPS) data, this study presents an overview of aggregate mobility in Panama following the country’s implementation of a sex-segregated social distancing policy. Panama was selected as it was the only nationwide sex-segregated policy which endured for the entire extent of the lockdown period. The paper looks at mobility trends on female- and male-sex mobility days, examining differences in volume of movement and type of community locations visited as compared to pre-COVID trends."

Integrating youth mental health into cash transfer programmes in response to the COVID-19 crisis in low-income and middle-income countries

Authored by the CHANCES-6 research team, The Lancet Psychiatry, 2021.

The CHANCES-6 project is led by the Care Policy and Evaluation Centre and covers Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, South Africa, Liberia, and Malawi.

Young people living in poverty and with mental health problems in LMICs are at particular risk of experiencing adverse health, wellbeing, and employment outcomes with long-term consequences. They are also at risk of developing mental health conditions during this pandemic. To support this population, cash transfer programmes should not only address urgent needs around food security and survival but expand their focus to address longer-term mental health impacts of pandemics and economic crises. Such an approach could help support young people's future life chances and break the vicious cycle between mental illness and poverty that spirals many young people into both socioeconomic and mental health disadvantage.

A pandemia de COVID-19 e (os)as profissionais de saúde pública: uma perspectiva de gênero e raça sobre a linha de frente [no Brasil]

Relatório de Clare Wenham et al, Gender & COVID-19, 2020.

A discussão sobre as consequências da pandemia de COVID-19 tem sido acompanhada, também, de um forte debate sobre o exacerbamento de desigualdades estruturais no Brasil e no mundo. Enquanto a rápida disseminação da doença e o grande número de mortes demonstra que o vírus em si não discrimina quem será infectado, diferentes grupos sociais têm sofrido de forma diversa as consequências da pandemia. Mais especificamente, marcadores de gênero, raça e classe se apresentam como condicionantes de vulnerabilidade para a infecção e enfrentamento da COVID-19.

The unintended impact of Colombia’s COVID-19 lockdown on forest fires

Co-authored by Dr Charles Palmer. Environmental and Resource Economics, special issue on “Economics of the Environment in the Shadow of Coronavirus”, forthcoming.

"The COVID-19 pandemic led to rapid and large-scale government intervention in economies and societies. A common policy response to covid-19 outbreaks has been lockdown or quarantine. Designed to slow the spread of the disease, lockdowns have unintended consequences for the environment. This article examines the impact of Colombia’s lockdown on forest fires, motivated by satellite data showing a particularly large upsurge of fires at around the time of lockdown implementation. We find that Colombia’s lockdown is associated with an increase in forest fires compared to three different counterfactuals, constructed to simulate the expected number of fires in the absence of the lockdown."

The impacts of COVID-19 on Brazil’s precarious labour market: informality, citizenship and the universal basic income

A report by Dr Mara Nogueira, Dr Aiko Ikemura Amaral, and Prof Gareth A. Jones. Agenda for International Development, 2020.

Brazil’s coronavirus crisis is also an economic crisis that both reveals and deepens historical inequalities. Given the country’s high levels of informality, guaranteeing the income of vulnerable workers is an essential step in tackling the pandemic and its economic effects. In this context, the idea of a universal basic income has resurfaced as a public policy that has the potential to promote inclusion and an expansion of citizenship.

Primer reporte de monitoreo: la seguridad humana en las comunidades de Medellín en tiempos del COVID-19

Con la participación de Dra Alexandra Abello Colak. A. Pulgarín et al., Observatorio de Seguridad Humana, 2020.

Un ejercicio de monitoreo de los impactos del COVID-19 y de las respuestas de diversos actores institucionales y de la sociedad a las amenazas que representa esta pandemia desde la perspectiva de las comunidades más vulnerables que habitan las laderas de la ciudad.

Will the pandemic derail hard-won progress on gender equality? 

Report for the UN Women "Spotlight on Gender, COVID-19, and the SDGs" series, co-authored by Dr Clare Wenham. UN Women, 2020. 

"COVID-19 has been declared a public health emergency of international concern and a global pandemic by the World Health Organization. This global threat to health security underscores the urgent need to accelerate progress on achieving Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 3 and the need to massively scale up international cooperation to deliver on SDG 3. It also reveals what is less obvious, but no less urgent: how health emergencies such as COVID-19, and the response to them, can exacerbate gender inequality and derail hard-won progress not only on SDG 3 but on all the SDGs."