Centre for Research on Pandemics & Society (PANSOC)
An OsloMet Centre of Research Excellence studying the societal aspects of pandemics
We at PANSOC are so happy and proud to announce that one of our Post-docs, Benjamin Schneider, has been selected for the Young CAS fellowship porogram 2022-2024.
Yo can read more about Bens project here: Introducing the Young CAS Fellows 2023/2024 – CAS
Pandemics are a pressing global threat to human life and security, and they have especially serious impacts on Indigenous people throughout the world.
The Centre for Advanced Study (CAS) funded project Social Science Meets Biology: Indigenous People and Severe Influenza Outcomes, to be held from August 2022 to June 2023, will bring together interdisciplinary researchers from PANSOC and other international institutions to foster conversations that integrate medical, epidemiological and social perspectives in order to increase understanding of Indigenous experiences when faced with pandemic diseases and better appreciate the diversity of pandemic consequences faced by Indigenous vs. non-Indigenous peoples.
The project will also seek to identify policies to improve prevention and control of pandemics with a particular focus on lessoning their impacts of Indigenous peoples and recommending future research priorities in this area.
As part of this project, a conference will be held in Oslo 15-16 May 2023. Read the call for papers here: Indigenous Peoples & Pandemics conference – CAS
Over the 2022-23 academic year, head of PANSOC, Svenn-Erik Mamelund, will lead a group at the Centre for Advanced Study at the Norwegian Academy for Science and Letters in Oslo.
Photo: On the left starting in front, Svenn-Erik Mamelund, Jessica Dimka, Heather Battles and Lisa Sattenspiel. On the right starting in front, Eleniai Damas, Gerardo Chowel and Benjamin Schneider.
In the Social Science Meets Biology: Indigenous People and Severe Influenza Outcomes – CAS project, 15 international researchers with a background in epidemiology, genetics, social sciences and history will study why Indigenous peoples are vulnerable to serious disease during pandemics. PANSOC is the first OsloMet group awarded a research stay at CAS. The selection of CAS research groups follows an extensive review process by international experts, which shows the outstanding international quality of PANSOC’s research.
Photo: Orphans after the “Spanish” flu pandemic in Nushagak, Alaska, summer of 1919. Source: Alaska Historical Library
In this new paper in Scandinavian Journal of Public health, titled Indigenous peoples and pandemics – Daniele E. Alves, Svenn-Erik Mamelund, Jessica Dimka, Lone Simonsen, Mathias Mølbak, Søren Ørskov, Lisa Sattenspiel, Lianne Tripp, Andrew Noymer, Gerardo Chowell-Puente, Sushma Dahal, Taylor P. Van Doren, Amanda Wissler, Courtney Heffernan, Kirsty Renfree Short, Heather Battles, Michael G. Baker, 2022 (sagepub.com), we have done a review of the literature on Indigenous vs. non-Indigenous disparities in mortality during the 1918 and 2009 influenza pandemics as well as the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
The paper concludes that there there were large disparities in mortality in 1918 and in 2009. However, there are simply not enough high quality data, which makes it difficult to investigate whether Indigenous peoples have a larger COVID-19 mortality risk than non-Indigenous persons.
This paper is the first of several collaborative papers that will come out of the 2022-2023 CAS-project titled Social Science Meets Biology: Indigenous People and Severe Influenza Outcomes – CAS and led by PANSOC leader Mamelund
Fra 15 august 2022 til 30 Juni 2023 skal senterleder Mamelund lede en forskergruppe på Centre for Advanced Study – CAS. I forbindelse med dette prosjektet har vi vært så heldige å få de verdensledende toppforskerne Jeffrey Tauenberger og John Oxford til å gi gjesteforelesninger om jakten på viruset som forårsaket spanskesyken på Det Norske Videnskaps-Akademi 8 november 2022. I vedlagte lenke kan dere 1) lese mer om de to foredragsholderne og deres foredrag og 2) og allerede nå melde dere på om dere vil delta på arrangementet.
Jessica Dimka was recently interviewed about her MSCA project on disability as a risk factor during the 1918 influenza pandemic. Read more here:
The influenza pandemics of 1918 and 2009, as well as the ongoing COVID-19, show that Indigenous people have extremely high risk of severe disease outcomes, but the reasons for this vulnerability are unclear. This week, the head of PANSOC, Svenn-Erik Mamelund, will hold a talk on Indigenous people & Pandemics for the “Indigenous Peoples and Development Branch, Division for Inclusive Social Development, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, at the United Nations in New York”
The influenza pandemic hit the native communities in Alaska hard. These children in an orphanage in Nushagak, Alaska, lost their parents. Summer of 1919. Source: Alaska Historical Library
In August 2022 to June 2023, Mamelund will also lead a CAS-project on this topic. You can read more here:
Social science meets biology: indigenous people and severe influenza outcomes – CAS
Why do Indigenous people have high risk of severe influenza? – CAS,
Announcing the CAS projects 2022/23: from influenza to peace-and-conflict, and algebra – CAS
PANSOC co-leader Jessica Dimka was interviewed about her research on disability during the 1918 flu and its relevance for today. Read “How vulnerable groups were left behind in pandemic response” by Richard Gray here:
https://horizon-magazine.eu/article/how-vulnerable-groups-were-left-behind-pandemic-response.html
Last week, MSCA fellow Jessica Dimka presented her project on disability as a risk factor during the 1918 pandemic. Watch the video here:
Jessica noted several sources that helped determine disease values used in her simulation model (and similar models for Newfoundland communities – see work by her PhD supervisor, Lisa Sattenspiel, and their colleagues). These sources include:
“‘An Avalanche of Unexpected Sickness’: Institutions and Disease in 1918 and Today.” Chelsea Chamberlain. June 23, 2020. Society for Historians of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. https://www.shgape.org/an-avalanche-of-unexpected-sickness/
Ferguson, N. M., Fraser, C., Donnelly, C. A., Ghani, A. C., & Anderson, R. M. (2004). Public health risk from the avian H5N1 influenza epidemic. Science, 304(5673), 968–969. https:// doi.org/10.1126/science.1096898
Mills, C. E., Robins, J. M., & Lipsitch, M. (2004). Transmissibility of 1918 pandemic influenza. Nature, 432, 904–906. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature03063
Jessica Dimka talked with OsloMet’s podcast Viten og snakkis about her MSCA project and what it has been like to research a pandemic during a pandemic. Take a listen here: https://vitenogsnakkis.oslomet.no/2021/05/14/researching-a-pandemic-during-a-pandemic/
