Researchers from the humanities and social sciences can help governments emerge and recover from COVID-19, yet their perspectives continue to be ignored and marginalised. Humanities and social science research can provide the political, historical, cultural, social, and economic insights to deepen our understanding of the pandemic, how it has been experienced, how to overcome it, and how best to learn from it

Pickersgill, Martyn

Smith, Matthew

English

Edinburgh Research Explorer

     Edinburgh Research Explorer                                      Expertise from the humanities and social sciences is essentialfor governmental responses to COVID-19Citation for published version:Pickersgill, M & Smith, M 2021, 'Expertise from the humanities and social sciences is essential forgovernmental responses to COVID-19', Journal of Global Health, vol. 11, 03081.https://doi.org/10.7189/jogh.11.03081Digital Object Identifier (DOI):10.7189/jogh.11.03081Link:Link to publication record in Edinburgh Research ExplorerDocument Version:Publisher's PDF, also known as Version of recordPublished In:Journal of Global HealthGeneral rightsCopyright for the publications made accessible via the Edinburgh Research Explorer is retained by the author(s)and / or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing these publications that users recognise andabide by the legal requirements associated with these rights.Take down policyThe University of Edinburgh has made every reasonable effort to ensure that Edinburgh Research Explorercontent complies with UK legislation. If you believe that the public display of this file breaches copyright pleasecontact openaccess@ed.ac.uk providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately andinvestigate your claim.Download date: 17. Aug. 2021VIEWPOINTSwww.jogh.org • doi: 10.7189/jogh.11.03081 1 2021  •  Vol. 11 •  03081There can be few people untouched by the social and economic turbulence of the SARS-CoV-2 pan-demic, even if they or their close ones have been medically unaffected by the virus. We have seen both the huge cost to human life of COVID-19 around the world, and the very considerable costs to lives as lived [1]. The disruption and abruption of swathes of educational, religious, and cultural activities and much, much more speak to the dramatic personal and political ramifications of managing a disease which at the start of last year did not even have a name [2].The disastrous implications of the global spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus have exacerbated and generated hu-manitarian crises in both classic and less familiar forms [3]. Increasing numbers of people, including in rela-tively affluent countries, continue to struggle to access the resources and support they need [4]. Despite this, expert advice and insight from the disciplines precisely concerned with the nature of societies and the work-ings of social, cultural, and economic processes – namely, the humanities and social sciences – have too often been under-utilised by policymakers tackling the pandemic.SARS-CoV-2 is a virus and COVID-19 a serious disease, so of course expertise from biomedicine and public health is needed on national and international advisory groups aimed at addressing and managing the pandemic. However, the broader effects of COVID-19 also need more sustained attention [5]. SARS-CoV-2 permeates society and culture, undermining diverse aspects of well-be-ing beyond a purely biomedical understanding of health. Innovative solutions to its management can consequently be derived by exploring historical and international experiences and re-examining and building from insights from philosophy and the arts [6].Many of the questions that policymakers at local, national, and global levels are dealing with in relation to CO-VID-19 have significant social, economic, and ethical dimensions [7]. What, for instance, are both the imme-diate and longer-lasting implications of different exit strategies to stay-at-home mandates? How can individu-als, communities, and infrastructures best recover from the pandemic and understand, anticipate, and adapt to the widespread changes to personal and professional lives that will result? And how can societies learn the Expertise from the humanities and social sciences is essential for governmental responses to COVID-19Martyn Pickersgill1, Matthew Smith21University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK2University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, UKResearchers from the humanities and social sciences can help gov-ernments emerge and recover from COVID-19, yet their perspectives are too often marginalised.© 2021 THE AUTHOR(S)JoGH © 2021 ISoGHCite as: Pickersgill M, Smith M. Expertise from the humanities and social sciences is essential for governmental responses to COVID-19. J Glob Health 2021;11:03081.Electronic supplementary material: The online version of this article contains supplementary material.VIEWPOINTS2021  •  Vol. 11 •  03081 2 www.jogh.org •  doi: 10.7189/jogh.11.03081Humanities and social science research can provide the political, historical, cul-tural, social, and economic insights to deepen our understanding of the pan-demic, how it has been experienced, how to overcome it, and how best to learn from it.lessons that will help us mitigate the effect of future pandemics and be-come fairer, more progressive, more equitable, and more sustainable? These questions demand close governmental collaboration and consul-tation with humanities and social scientific experts who have much to say and more to offer [8,9].Like their colleagues within the biomedical and public health sciences, experts from the humanities and social sciences have, to-date, promot-ed the visibility and uptake of disciplinary insights to inform the man-agement and recovery phases of societies, and have synthesised and put forward existing research evidence and insights to support decision-making. Experts from these disciplines have made their presence felt in multiple ways across the world. From carrying out vital research, to engaging with communities, to informing policy, there’s no vacuum of expertise.At an international level, organisations like the World Health Organiza-tion (WHO) engages closely with such experts. Ethics scholars especial-ly have informed various reports and briefings [10,11], with the WHO Working Group on Ethics and COVID-19 representing one key source of advice and expertise. At an early point in the pandemic the WHO also convened an international COVID-19 Social Science Working Group [12]. Similarly, a range of national governments have incorporated (to greater or lesser degrees) humanities and social science expertise within their broader pandemic advisory committees.Yet, it remains the case that humanities and social science expertise can too easily be elided by politicians. This is perhaps not least when it complicates solutions deemed by others to be straightforward, or when those it of-fers are regarded as insufficiently resonant with the mores of powerful decision-makers. Further, while many experts in ethics, sociology, and other specialisms might feature as part of advisory committees, their numbers are generally low in comparison to their more visible colleagues in biomedicine and public health.This has implications for the extent to which expertise from the humani-ties and social sciences can be successfully leveraged to augment – and, when necessary, to challenge – other inputs into policy. Public health decision-making also frequently rests on assumptions about social pro-cesses and cultural activities (about, for example, spirituality, mobility, and family composition, and practices). When moving at speed, the com-plexities of these are so vital to understand can be elided. If experts in the humanities and social sciences do not have a platform from which to, for instance, highlight the gaps between assumptions and realities, then lim-its to the success of COVID-19 management strategies will be inadver-tently imposed.Societies are formed through the interactions between histories, laws, traditions, and social relationships at different levels. Deep understandings of these and the complexity of their effects on economies, communities, and individuals are absolutely vital to informing the design, development, and roll-out of policy, regulatory, and technical interventions into societies afflicted by – and eventually recovering from – the SARS-CoV-2 vi-rus. It is these understandings that must be brought to bear on the current crisis through an enhanced role for the humanities and social sciences as part of policy advising and making, as societies around the world seek to mitigate the worst aspects of COVID-19 - and move towards recovery.Photo: From Martyn Pickersgill’s collection, used with permission.Acknowledgements: The authors are very grateful to Vikki Entwistle and Richard Huxtable for comments on an ear-lier draft.Funding: None declared.Authorship contributions: First drafted by MP, with input from MS who then also reviewed and edited the text. The final version of the editorial was produced by MP and confirmed by MS.Conflicts of interest: MP acknowledges the following funding: British Academy [EN160164], ESRC [ES/T014164/1; ES/S013873/1], MRC [MR/S035818/1], Wellcome Trust [209519/Z/17/Z; WT106612MA]. MS acknowledges the fol-lowing funding: AHRC [AH/L009641/1]. The authors have completed the ICMJE Conflicts of Interest form (available upon request from the corresponding author), and declare no further conflicts of interest.VIEWPOINTSwww.jogh.org • doi: 10.7189/jogh.11.03081 3 2021  •  Vol. 11 •  03081REFERENCES  1  Douglas M, Katikireddi SV, Taulbut M, McKee M, McCartney G. Mitigating the wider health effects of covid-19 pandemic re-sponse. BMJ. 2020;369:m1557. Medline:32341002 doi:10.1136/bmj.m1557 2  Pickersgill M. Pandemic sociology. Engag Sci Technol Soc. 2020;6:347-50. Medline:33210012 doi:10.17351/ests2020.523 3  International Committee of the Red Cross. What is the humanitarian impact of the COVID-19 pandemic? Available: https://www.icrc.org/en/document/what-humanitarian-impact-covid-19-pandemic. Accessed: 6 June 2021. 4  Wellcome Trust. Explainer: From equality to global poverty: how Covid-19 is affecting societies and economies. Available: https://wellcome.org/news/equality-global-poverty-how-covid-19-affecting-societies-and-economies. Accessed: 6 June 2021. 5  Wang Z, Tang K. Combatting COVID-19: health equity matters. Nat Med. 2020;26:458. Medline:32284617 doi:10.1038/s41591-020-0823-6 6  Shah H. COVID-19 recovery: science isn’t enough to save us. Nature. 2021;591:503. Medline:33758407 doi:10.1038/d41586-021-00731-7 7  Farrar J. The worst of Covid-19 may still be to come. 21st July 2020. Financial Times. Available: https://www.ft.com/content/031b42a7-e2b3-43ae-9139-d31a4cb37498. Accessed: 4 Nov 2020. 8  Fritz Z, Huxtable R, Ives J, Paton A, Slowther AM, Wilkinson D. Ethical road map through the covid-19 pandemic. BMJ. 2020;369:m2033. Medline:32439751 doi:10.1136/bmj.m2033 9  Green ST, Cladi L. Covid-19: the humanities and social sciences have much to contribute to beating this pandemic and the next. BMJ. 2020;370:m3523. Medline:32917648 doi:10.1136/bmj.m352310  World Health Organization. Ethics and COVID-19: resource allocation and priority-setting. Available: https://www.who.int/ethics/publications/ethics-and-covid-19-resource-allocation-and-priority-setting/en/. Accessed: 6 June 2021.11  World Health Organization. Emergency Use Designation of COVID-19 candidate vaccines: Ethical considerations for cur-rent and future COVID-19 placebo-controlled vaccine trials and trial unblinding. Available: https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/337940/WHO-2019-nCoV-Policy_Brief-EUD_placebo-controlled_vaccine_trials-2020.1-eng.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y. Accessed: 6 June 2021.12  World Health Organization. COVID-19 Social Science working group. Available: https://www.who.int/publications/m/item/covid-19-social-science-working-group. Accessed: 6 June 2021.Correspondence to:Professor Martyn Pickersgill Usher Institute University of Edinburgh Edinburgh Medical School Teviot Place Edinburgh, EH8 9AG UK martyn.pickersgill@ed.ac.uk

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Expertise from the humanities and social sciences is essential for governmental responses to COVID-19

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Expertise from the humanities and social sciences is essential for governmental responses to COVID-19

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