The "Covid & Economics" project examines the economic impacts of and responses to Covid-19. It captures innovations and transformations that have taken place as a result, and sets out a roadmap for positive action and policy to create more sustainable and resilient communities and economies.
The project will analyse the economics of health service delivery and give special attention to peripheral areas and to young people and entreprenerus (up to age 40), to gain their unique perspectives and innovations on Covid-19 and sustainable development. It will also add a human rights perspective on the inequities of health systems/economies, including for indigenous communities within the NPA.
This diversity will ensure the project integrates many different perspectives on economic impacts and responses to Covid (fitting for the complex challenges Covid has caused), including comparative transnational analysis, while remaining rooted in realities on the ground.
"Covid & Economics" includes a partnership of 8 organisations led by Community Development Lens, Scotland.
The second and last approved project is called AET "Analysing emerging themes in the ‘new’ environment of living with COVID-19, through the twin lenses of care homes and university campuses".
The project reflects on the recent surge of the spread of COVID-19 primarily amoung young people and other emerging themes such as: unemployment, digital and broadband "poverty", increased alcohol consumption, larger unsafe social gatherings and a fear of using public transport.
The AET project will examine and describe these and other emerging themes through the twin lenses of the experiences of care home staff, university staff and students and how that may be generalised to society as a whole through an analysis of the other NPA Covid-19 thematic projects.
AET is led by NHS Highland Research Development and Innovation department, Scotland and involves 15 partnership organisations including University of New England in the USA.
Next steps
All 6 thematic projects will continue their work until the end of 2020 and report their findings in spring 2021. Their insights will be regularly published on the "NPA COVID-19 Response" project website, CoRE, and combined into a NPA COVID-19 Response document compiled by the CoRE project.