Harnessing groups for health in response to public health crises: Insights from the COVID-19 pandemic

Dr Aoife Marie Foran     University of Limerick & University of Queensland (UQ)

Vaccine hesitancy, suboptimal vaccine effectiveness, and limited understanding of long COVID hinder global COVID-19 management and pose challenges for future pandemics and disease outbreaks. Research on vaccination uptake, vaccine response, and longer-term consequences of infectious diseases is therefore warranted. There are important social determinants influencing COVID outcomes, making groups relevant to understanding people’s engagement with public health. However, limited research scrutinises how social group memberships can be harnessed for health during public health crises. The social identity approach (SIA) argues that belonging to social groups is important for health, and people’s health behaviors are shaped by their group memberships. This fellowship will apply a novel social identity perspective to interrogate the relevance of group membership for people’s health behavior in response to public health crises by using the COVID-19 context.

This innovative fellowship addresses a global priority to protect people’s health in response to public health crises, aligning with goals of EU strategies, such as UN Sustainable Development Goals for public health. The ongoing global spread of COVID-19 and the potential for future pandemics highlights the centrality of vaccines and behavioural sciences for the field of public health. Drawing on approaches in social psychology and public health, this fellowship uses novel methodologies to explore how group memberships influence measures surrounding disease prevention (vaccine uptake, objective 1), protection (antibody response, objective 2), and support people’s health following infection (long COVID, objective 3). This fellowship supports EU goals through high-impact scientific research, relevant to social psychology, public health, and psychophysiology. Understanding the link between group memberships, behaviour and public health in response to crises such as COVID-19 and identifying social solutions that protect health will have global benefit.

Dr Foran will examine in a cross-national study of 30 countries the role of group membership (i.e., nation, family, friends, work groupings and religion) and social identity resources, and their impact on COVID-19 vaccine uptake. She will also determine whether group memberships (i.e., family, friends, work groupings, neighbourhood, religion), and social identity resources affect people’s antibody response to the COVID-19 vaccination. Dr Foran will also examine whether everyday group memberships, such as family and friend networks and their associated social identity resources, impact neuropsychological and physiological indices in people reporting long-term COVID symptoms. These three studies will demonstrate how an integration of social-psychological processes, behaviour and physiology are important for our understanding of public health crises. Overall, the fellowship will provide novel insight into health promotion in response to public health crises during the COVID-19 context, capitalising on the real-world data collected, making it a unique public health research opportunity.

By identifying social solutions to protect people’s health in response to public health crises such as COVID-19, this project will be invaluable in safeguarding public health, informing evidence-based policies to mitigate the impact of COVID-19 and similar infectious disease outbreaks in the future. During her 3 year fellowship, Dr Foran will be mentored by Professor Orla Muldoon, University of Limerick and Professor Jolanda Jetten, University of Queensland.