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Periscope

Understanding the response to Covid-19 and enhancing preparedness for future pandemics

Periscope logo

PERISCOPE was a large-scale research project involving a consortium of 32 European institutions to investigate the social, economic, behavioural, and mental health-related aspects of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Periscope developed guidance for policymakers to enhance Europe’s preparedness for future similar events.

Dr Elizabeth Storer, Firoz Lalji Institute for Africa

The project ran for 36 months from 1 November 2020 to 31 October 2023. LSE was a leading partner in delivering PERISCOPE's objectives. Hosted by the , the wider PERISCOPE team included LSE faculty members across the Department of Economics, Department of Anthropology, Department of Health Policy, Department of Social Policy and the LSE Behavioural Lab.

Periscope logo

Objectives included:

  • to gather data on the broad impacts of Covid-19 to develop a comprehensive, user-friendly, openly accessible Covid Atlas, which can be a reference tool for researchers and policymakers, and a dynamic source of information to disseminate to the general public;
  • to perform innovative statistical analysis on the collected data, with the help of various methods including machine learning tools;
  • to identify successful practices and approaches adopted at the local level, which could be scaled up at the pan-European level for a better containment of the pandemic and its related socio-economic impacts;
  • to develop guidance for policymakers to enhance Europe’s preparedness for future similar events and proposed reforms in the multi-level governance of health.

Key outputs:

LSE Commission for Pandemic Governance and Inequalities

This was a public panel event to share findings from the LSE Commission for Pandemic Governance and Inequalities. This was part of the Europe-wide Horizon-2020 PERISCOPE project, a cross-disciplinary study on the socioeconomic impact of Covid-19 and pandemic preparedness.

This public panel event hosted at LSE was an opportunity for cross-disciplinary reflection on the experiences, challenges and opportunities of Covid-19 governance, to inform engaged discussion and ideas for future pandemics.

The event consolidated findings from a three-part commission involving key community leaders, policymakers and young people from across the UK and Europe. The commission is focused is on inequalities related to Covid-19 governance, with the aim of producing collaborative recommendations on how to ameliorate these inequalities in the present, and how to build a new model of pandemic governance in the future.

The event on 5 June brought together of practitioners, policymakers and academics to discuss lessons learned during Covid-19 for pandemic governance and preparedness.

The programme was structured around key themes related to local, national and global levels of pandemic governance, such as public health responses to Covid-19, evidence and data in decision-making, and the role of carers and social infrastructures.

You can learn more about the event by reading the event blog.