Category: Publications

This new paper is a collaboration with colleagues in Chile and Mexico. You can read it here:

Socioeconomic inequalities in Chile during the COVID-19 pandemic: A regional analysis of income poverty | PLOS One

he COVID-19 pandemic caused an unprecedented economic crisis, intensifying poverty levels in Latin America, particularly in Chile. This study examines the short- and long-term socioeconomic impacts of COVID-19 on income poverty in Chile, focusing on regional disparities, rurality, ethnicity, educational attainment, and immigration. Using data from the Chile National Socioeconomic Characterization Survey (CASEN) for 2017, 2020, and 2022, we analyzed poverty trends across the pre-pandemic, pandemic, and post-pandemic periods. We employed spatial clustering techniques with Local Moran’s I to detect poverty hotspots and applied logistic regression models to identify key sociodemographic factors associated with these hotspots. Our results reveal stark regional disparities, with disproportionately higher poverty rates among rural populations, Indigenous communities, and individuals with lower education levels or immigrant backgrounds. The proportion of individuals in poverty hotspots rose from 6.8% in 2017 to 8.6% in 2020, before slightly declining to 7.7% in 2022. Although emergency monetary subsidies helped reduce overall poverty from 10.8% in 2020 to 6.5% in 2022, these measures were insufficient to address deep-rooted structural inequalities. Our findings underscore the urgent need for targeted, long-term policies that go beyond temporary financial assistance and tackle systemic disparities linked to rurality, ethnicity, education, and immigration. Such measures are essential for achieving sustainable poverty reduction and fostering inclusive economic growth in Chile.

Our Centre-leader is co-author on a new paper with several external collaborators, “The Role of Social Media in Mitigating the Long-Term Impact of Social Isolation on Mental and Cognitive Health in Older Adults During the COVID-19 Pandemic: The HUNT Study”,  International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry | Wiley Online Library

Summary

• Those experiencing social isolation during the pandemic faced a larger decline in mental health, but not cognitive health, compared to those who were not isolated.
• Staying connected through social media during the pandemic did not prevent mental health decline but was associated with a slower rate of cognitive decline in both socially isolated and not isolated individuals.
• The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the limitations of relying only on digital solutions to maintain social connections, mental health, and cognitive function.

Mamelund was also co-author on another recently published paper, “A longitudinal cohort study on dispensed analgesic and psychotropic medications in older adults before, during, and after the COVID-19 pandemic: the HUNT study” in BMC Geriatrics.
https://doi.org/10.1186/s12877-025-05745-8

In a recent article published in Ethnohistory, PANSOC Centre Leader Svenn-Erik Mamelund, former PANSOC Co-Head Jessica Dimka (now Seton Hall University), and the Co-Leader of our 2022–23 Centre for Advanced Study project Lisa Sattenspiel (University of Missouri) analyze the experience of indigenous young people at non-reservation boarding schools run by the US federal government during the 1918–20 influenza pandemic.

With Mikaëla Adams (University of Mississippi), they explore primary qualitative and quantitative data from correspondence between schools and the Indian Office of the US Department of the Interior. This rare source set offers information about pandemic management strategies and outcomes, including infection patterns and deaths.

For the most part, schools aimed to prevent infections through quarantine, preventing visits from outsiders, rather than ceasing instruction. But not all quarantines were strictly kept, and breaches of quarantined led to outbreaks of infection. In other cases, quarantine was only imposed after influenza had already arrived, limiting its effectiveness.

While reservations were hit hard by the pandemic, nonreservation boarding schools did not escape the flu and some had very high mortality rates, over 3% in several cases. The authors argue that poor pre-pandemic health in nonreservation boarding schools, a result of insufficient federal funding, was a main contributor to this outcome.

PANSOC Affiliated Researcher Vibeke Narverud Nyborg (University of Southeastern Norway) has recently published an Open Access article in the Continuity & Change on the types and uses of public health legislation in Norway during the 1918–20 influenza pandemic.

The article analyzes the types and content of public health legislation that had been established in Norway before the pandemic and how this legal regime worked in practice during the period 1918–20. It shows that there was substantial local heterogeneity in the adoption and duration of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) such as restrictions on public gatherings, as such measures were determined by local actors such as doctors who served on municipal health boards. As in other contexts, there were debates about the suitability of different measures and concerns regarding their restrictions on individual freedom. The study suggests that the lack of coordinated and extensive NPI adoption may have contributed to higher morbidity and mortality.

PANSOC Centre Leader Svenn-Erik Mamelund and Researcher Gerardo Chowell are authors on a recently-published paper in Avances en Interacción Humano-Computadora. The paper constructs and validates a Balanced Scorecard for survey data collected at a Mexican university during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The scorecard presents a multidimensional analysis of up-to-date data on aspects of pandemic experience such as physical and mental health, and thereby improve decision-making by frontline service providers and policymakers. The study constructed a dashboard of data collective from students at the University of Colima and tested and improved it for usability. The use of similar scorecards or dashboards at various levels may be a valuable tool for capturing and presenting data in future pandemics, which can improve the tailoring of health responses.

Four PANSOC-affiliated researchers have just published a new open access paper in BMC Infectious Diseases examining the COVID-19 pandemic in Chiapas, Mexico, a region with a large indigenous population.

Elienai Joaquin-Damas, PANSOC collaborator during the 2022–23 Centre for Advanced Study project on Indigenous Peoples and Pandemics, is the lead author of this study that uses survey data from secondary school students to capture the prevalence of COVID-19 infections, deaths, and vaccine uptake. Centre leader Svenn-Erik Mamelund, postdoc Ben Schneider, and researcher Gerardo Chowell also contributed to the paper.

The study suggests substantial underreporting of COVID-related deaths in Chiapas: while national statistics reported just 212 cases and one death in the municipality of Chamula, which had a population of more than 75,000, 14% of survey respondents reported at least one COVID infection for themselves, and 4.7% reported at least one death in their household. Compounding these findings, at the time of the survey in September-October 2023 almost 80% of respondents had not received a single dose of a COVID-19 vaccine.

The study suggests that despite increased attention to indigenous communities in public health research and practice in recent decades, large disparities remain both in data collection and policies to reduce health inequalities.

While at PANSOC, postdoc Maria Bekker-Nielsen Dunbar co-authored a new preprint systematically reviewing the prevalance of Aedes-borne (mosquito-carried) Arboviral infections in Europe in recent decades.

The authors carried out a registered systematic review of studies that discuss the spread of various diseases transmitted to humans by Aedes mosquitoes in Europe from 2000 to 2023. These diseases, including dengue, Zika, yellow fever, and West Nile virus, pose a substantial and growing threat to public health. The review found that while most cases identified in the literature were travel-related, more than 15% originated in Europe. The overall case fatality rate in the 479 studies reviewed was about 1%. Most of these diseases do not have available treatments or vaccination, which increases the importance of surveillance and prevention policies.

Recent PANSOC postdoc Maria Bekker-Nielsen Dunbar contributed a co-authored chapter during her time with us to the Springer Handbook of Epidemiology on reproducibility in this scientific field.

The authors establish a stepwise framework for epidemiologists to improve reproducibility, which is a topic of increasing interest and relevance in science and metascience. The ten steps discussed cover the entire research process from idea development to paper submission, and in each step the chapter discusses researcher concerns and implementation of the step. The chapter then presents how the use of these steps enhanced the reliability of research using a practical example of epidemiology from the UK.

During her time at PANSOC, postdoc Maria Bekker-Nielsen Dunbar published an article in the Proceedings of the Computational Humanities Research Conference providing an explanation of the use of the term “influenza” in English, in contrast to the more common “grippe” of other Indo-European languages.

While most Indo-European languages refer to the disease using some variant of “grippe”, Italian, English, Uralic, and Nordic languages have preferred “influenza” (which has an Italian origin). The authors argue that “influenza” in contrast to “grippe”, sounds sufficiently different from other English words to avoid ambiguity in understanding. They test the linguistic space available for possible terms that could be used to describe influenza and posit that the term selected provided less ambiguity than the terms used in other Indo-European languages.

Drivers and barriers of seasonal influenza vaccination 2015/16 & 2019/20 to 2022/23 – a survey on why most Norwegians don’t get the flu vaccine | BMC Public Health (springer.com)

Background:

This study aimed to explore the reasons adults in the general population, influenza risk groups (RGs) and health care workers (HCWs) in Norway give for their vaccination choices and whether these reasons vary between groups or over time in order to further improve influenza vaccination coverage.

Methods:

Respondents of a nationally representative telephone survey conducted by Statistics Norway were asked “What was the most important reason why you did/did not get vaccinated?”. The question on influenza non-vaccination was included in 2016 and in 2020 to 2023 and the question on influenza vaccination in 2021 to 2023.

Results:

The study included 9 705 individuals aged 18–79 years. Influenza vaccination coverage in the RGs increased from 20.6% in 2016 to 63.1% in 2022, before a reduction to 58.3% in 2023. Common reasons for non-vaccination were similar in all groups. The most cited reasons were “no need” for the vaccine and “no specific reason”, followed by “not recommended/offered the vaccine”, “worry about side effects” and “vaccine refusal”. The most frequent reasons for vaccination among the general population and RGs were protection against influenza and belonging to a RG, while the most frequent responses among HCWs were being offered the vaccine at work/work in health care, followed by a desire for protection against influenza. Receiving a vaccine recommendation from a health professional was mentioned in all groups. We also observed that the proportion reporting “no need” for the vaccine decreased over time, especially among HCWs, and that the proportions reporting vaccine refusal and worry about side effects as reasons for non-vaccination were temporarily reduced during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Conclusions:

The general population and RGs cite protection against influenza as their primary incentive for vaccination, while HCWs mainly refer to their professional role or workplace vaccination. For non-vaccination we see a similar pattern in all groups, with “no need” and “no specific reason” as the main reasons. Of note, worry about side effects and vaccine refusal is as frequent among HCWs as in other groups. Continued efforts to maintain and increase vaccine confidence are needed.