Room
Auditoire Jéquier-Doge ( traverser la route - bâtiment de liaison )
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Theme
Covid / inequities
Title
How did Covid-19 policies influence inequities in health? Building back fairer from the pandemic
Chair
Joachim Marti
Affiliation
Unisanté, University of Lausanne
Co-author:
- Mauricio Avendano
- Patrick Bodenmann
- Nolwenn Bühler
- Yves Henchoz
- Sandra Hotz
- Géraldine Marks
- Dominique Sprumont
Abstract
OverviewThis workshop is structured around our NRP80 interdisciplinary project on the equity impact of Covid-19 policies, involving collaboration across law, economics, socio-anthropology, social policy, epidemiology, and social medicine. After providing an overview of the project and its sub-parts, we will discuss recent evidence and preliminary findings on the equity impact of specific Covid-19 policies in Switzerland and abroad.
Background
The Covid-19 pandemic brought into sharper focus the intersection between economic and health inequalities. Emerging evidence suggests that the measures taken to contain the pandemic reinforced existing inequalities by disproportionately affecting groups already considered vulnerable: Those with lower income and education, workers in essential jobs, ethnic minorities and women were more likely to experience reductions in measures of wellbeing, including income, employment, social participation, and mental health. In this workshop, we will address two critical questions:
1) How did government policies, laws, and decisions to contain the Covid-19 pandemic contribute to these inequalities? While potentially effective at reducing transmission, Covid-19 containment policies may have exacerbated existing inequalities and produced new forms of inequality.
2) Did policies to mitigate the economic impact of Covid-19 help to protect vulnerable groups and contribute to reducing inequalities? Unprecedented social protection policies to compensate for loss of earnings for the self-employed or earning loss allowances for employees offer a unique opportunity to examine the role of social protection to address inequalities caused by major societal shocks.
We propose a workshop structured around four contributions and a discussion of these two questions, based on both quantitative and qualitative studies. Our aim is to provide policy-relevant evidence and tools to help decision makers account for the potential equity impacts of policies in response to major epidemics and societal shocks. The programme will be as follows:
Project overview: A framework to study the equity impact of Covid-19 policies - J. Marti 10’
Legal epidemiology and scientific legal mapping of Covid-19 policies - G. Marks, S. Hotz 15’
How did Covid-19 policies impact health equity in Switzerland and across countries? - M. Avendano, Y. Henchoz 15’
The moral economies of triage: the management of vulnerabilities in healthcare practices - N. Bühler, P. Bodenmann 15’
Discussion with the audience: What decision-makers need to know to build back fairer? - D. Sprumont 20’