Centre for Research on Pandemics & Society (PANSOC)
An OsloMet Centre of Research Excellence studying the societal aspects of pandemics
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
Why is a new approach needed to reduce ethnic inequalities in pandemic disease burden & improve public health? In this paper, the PANSOC Centre leader discuss this question in collaboration with Esperanza Díaz Pérez and her colleagues at the Pandemic Research Center in Bergen and also colleagues at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health.
The paper is published in Scandinavian Journal of Public Health and can be found here:
Dette er senterlederens påstand, og han argumenterer for at det er mulig å gjøre fremragende pandemiforskning uten politisk styring og samtidig ha samfunnsmessig “impact”. Du kan lese kronikken her:
Å skyte spurv med kanon kan lønne seg (khrono.no)
Senterelder Mamelund har skrevet inviterte spalter for Morgenbladet det siste halvåret. Dette er spalte 6 av 6 om mulige konsekvenser av pandemier, denne gang undrer Mamelund og professor Jo Thori Lind på UiO om pandemien kan påvirke valgdeltakelse og hvem som vinner valget.
Kan covid-19 påvirke stortingsvalget til høsten? – Morgenbladet
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
You can get the answer by listening to the latest Viten & Snakkis podcast with Lara Steinmetz and Carla Hughes. Writing a Master’s thesis on pandemics, during a pandemic | (oslomet.no)
The 10th and last webinar this spring is held by associate professor at University of Oxford, Erica Charters on June 10 at 1600-1700 (CET).
Please send e-mail to masv@oslomet.no to get the zoom-link
See Charters personal page here: Dr Erica Charters | Faculty of History (ox.ac.uk)
Blurb: As COVID-19 drags on and vaccines seem to promise widespread immunity, the world’s attention has turned to predicting how the present pandemic will end. Yet how do societies know when an epidemic has ended and normal life can resume? What criteria and markers indicate an epidemic’s end? Who has the insight, authority, and credibility to decipher these signs? Although researchers have paid a great deal of attention to the origins of epidemics and to the climactic high points of outbreaks, they have paid little attention to how epidemics actually end. This talk will redirect attention to the ending of epidemics, making use of historical and other disciplinary research to provide a tentative framework for outlining how epidemics end, as part of the interdisciplinary project ‘How Epidemics End’, based at the University of Oxford.
In this key-note titled “Social Disparities & Pandemics, Mamelund will 1) present results showing that social inequality was a forgotten factor in pandemic preparedness before the COVID-19 pandemic, and speculate why this was the case; 2) present results on the social inequalities in COVID-19 pandemic disease burden and call for more research on the distal and proximal causes of these disparities; and 3) discuss how we can take both medical and social vulnerability into account in pandemic preparedness to be better prepared for the next pandemic.
To register for the conference, see here: Annual Posthumus Conference 2021 ‘Epidemics and Social Inequality’, 20-21 May – N.W. Posthumus Institute (ru.nl)
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/
Nan Zou Bakkeli is the author of this new paper published in SSM Population Health
