LIST OF PANELS

The COVID-19 pandemic magnified the disconnect between policy makers, academia, people and communities, particularly for vulnerable and under-served groups who faced even more inequalities, largely based on social determinants of health. The disproportionate impact – for example in minorities and indigenous populations; people in aged care facilities; rural and remote communities; the poorest; and people with complex needs – highlights a continued inability to coordinate a cross policy response to achieve equality for vulnerable groups. As a consequence there is an increasing call to take the pandemic as an opportunity to fundamentally rebuild our society and systems in a more sustainable, equitable way – but how? The Sustainable Development Goals highlight the complexity and intersectorality of the challenges, but also offer a unique opportunity to promote community-led transformational change. This calls for policy making using agile and active learning (Dewing 2008) or similar approaches: critically analysing personal actions, discussing and reflecting with others, and learning through actions.

This panel will explore new important understandings on inequalities across the life course in different cultural and policy contexts; how the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated these inequalities, but also how the pandemic has accelerated innovative ways of overcoming them, and how person-defined outcomes can inform and accelerate achievement of policy aims.  Our panel goes beyond the state of the art by employing a multi-disciplinary theoretical lens and giving a voice to underrepresented groups, in order to tackle inequalities regarding the social determinants of health.  Our innovative methodological approaches and collaborative learning will generate interdisciplinary scientific knowledge on how to address social inequalities, how to build the case for reform and how to turn citizen movements into community-led change programmes. Scientific outcomes will include innovative and actionable policy and practice solutions designed to deliver concrete changes. 

Our research questions contribute to several cross-cutting themes, though mainly to the complex learnings for policy solutions using the impact and lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic regarding better, more equitable and evidence-based health and care policies for the future:

1. How have policies implemented during the pandemic impacted the rise in inequalities, especially for the most vulnerable groups?
2. What new insights into identifying and counteracting inequalities can be gleaned through multi-stakeholder exchanges of learning and best practice?
3. How can spontaneous innovations on the ground, which were developed during the pandemic, be supported by evidence and policy to create sustainable change?
4. What are the policy lessons to be drawn about how best to address inequalities experienced in order to increase resilience against future health and economic crises?

In support of the panel topic, we are looking for papers, which explore one or more of the research questions around policy implementation and lessons learned from the crisis, the effect on inequalities, and how the evidence can be garnered, presented and translated into meaningful and actionable policy recommendations to reduce the inequalities created or exacerbated by COVID-19. The panel aims to identify strategies that enable policy makers to prepare for better decision making during crises, and engage with communities to anticipate the impact on social determinants of health and inequalities. Using concepts such a the “Big windows, little windows” theory of policy implementation (Exworthy and Powell, 2004), papers may want to explore:

-       how to work jointly with policy-makers and communities to analyse the impacts of different policies during the COVID-19 pandemic using a holistic health and wellbeing lens that considers social determinants of health and inequalities;

-       to examine innovative action learning approaches involving communities to foster macro-level policy change to meaningfully address inequalities and social determinants of health; or

-       how to co-create, with policy-makers, communities and stakeholders, policy learnings to tackle the inequalities created or exacerbated by the pandemic.

Other topics are welcomed, especially if addressing the challenges using a multi-disciplinary and action research approach.