Project Factsheets

BE-PIN
The Belgian Pandemic Intelligence Network

• Theme: Pandemic Intelligence
• Duration of the project: 39 months
• Budget: 1 993 020 €
• Funded partners: UHasselt (Coordinator); UAntwerpen; Sciensano; ITG; ULB
• Non-funded partners: Belgian Healthcare Knowledge Centre (KCE); KU Leuven (IDEWE); National Bank of Belgium
• Contact: Jeroen Wynen

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Summary

BE-PIN sets the scientific and organisational foundations for a multidisciplinary, collaborative intelligence network in Belgium capable of addressing future pandemic and epidemic risks. The project will work towards better access to data, more advanced analytical capacities, and tailored tools providing important insights for decision-making and communication at federal and regional levels. The project will identify the current gaps in data preparedness, validation and interpretation and provide the epidemic intelligence network with practical and technical guidelines towards a federal data collection protocol. In direct support of policy makers, the project will establish an advanced analytical and modelling framework that generates the up-to-date epidemiological information they need for policy development, communication and justification. BE-PIN further contributes to a comprehensive theoretical framework for evidence-based pandemic management in the Belgian context and to the feasibility of quantifying carefully selected impact indicators. Moreover, a retrospective assessment of the economic impact and recommendations based thereon will be made to minimise this impact for future pandemics. Lessons learned from the communication practices for knowledge transfer during the COVID-19 crisis and the analysis of the visibility of (scientific) expertise in government communication, the press and social media, as opposed to misinformation and disinformation, will lead to recommendations for effective knowledge brokering. Finally, the governance of such a network will be investigated, more importantly the organisation of it and the legal operation. Throughout the project, stakeholder engagement, co-creation, international benchmarking and the anticipation of various pathogens and epidemic scenarios will be the main pathways to improved preparedness capacity.

Documentation

• Project website
• Presentation kick-off meeting

BE-WELL
Care, Buffering Effects and WELL-being at the time of the pandemic and after

• Theme: Well-being; Inequalities and Vulnerabilities
• Duration of the project: 30 months
• Budget: 592 950 €
• Funded partners: UCLouvain (Coordinator); UAntwerpen
• Non-funded partners : University of Padua; Université du Luxembourg-Department of Social Sciences; Eurocarers; Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research – Department Population Europe Secretariat; l’UNI Global Union – Europa, Department UNI Care
• Contact:

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Summary

The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly disrupted various facets of people’s lives. For young adults who were on the verge of transitioning into adulthood, these disruptions may have had an especially profound impact. Similarly, older individuals were particularly vulnerable to COVID-19, and their day-to-day routines have been significantly affected. Family ties may have acquired a special importance to buffer some of the adverse consequences of the pandemic and to preserve health and well-being. Consequently, caregivers may have encountered new challenges pertaining to their well-being. At the same time, the role of non-family ties has received limited attention in research on the COVID-19 pandemic.
The BE-WELL project is an interdisciplinary research initiative, involving demographers, sociologists, and researchers in public health. Focusing on Belgium, and adopting a comparative and life-course perspective, the project examines four main domains where care relations and well-being were affected by the COVID-19 crisis: young adults’ residential shifts (Work Package 2, WP2), the variance and impacts of informal care on well-being of caregivers (WP3), the role of family and non-family ties on older people well-being (WP4), and unmet (mental) healthcare needs (WP5). The gender dimension, the socio-economic disadvantage, and welfare policies are incorporated as overarching themes of each WP. In WP3-WP5, the goal is to measure objective and subjective well-being (loneliness, physical and mental health, healthcare needs, etc.) according to specific profiles of individuals. By focusing on measurable goals, the BE-WELL project will inform federal policies, for improved care, health, and well-being during global crises.

Documentation

• Project website
• Presentation kick-off meeting

DistantButClose
Physically distant but socially close: how to prevent (inequalities in) loneliness and social isolation in times of crisis? Lessons learnt from the COVID-19 pandemic

• Theme: Well-being; Inequalities and Vulnerabilities; Democratic Governance
• Duration of the project: 36 months
• Budget: 899 005 €
• Funded partners: Ugent (Coordinator) ; ULB; UAntwerpen; Sciensano
• Non-funded partners: UGent (Vakgroep Volksgezondheid en Eerstelijnszorg, Gezondheidsbevordering); UAntwerpen (Departement Sociologie, Centrum voor Demografie, Familie en Gezondheid)
• Contact: Katrijn Delaruelle

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Summary

The DistantButClose project aims to investigate the public health relevance of loneliness and social isolation during the pandemic period, as well as the impact that the COVID-19 pandemic has had on loneliness and social isolation across different sociodemographic groups. The project will expand the understanding in four key ways. Firstly, the team will investigate the influence of loneliness and social isolation on individuals' willingness to adhere to preventive measures such as vaccination, handwashing and mask-wearing that are essential to end pandemics. This will help determine the necessary prioritization of these health issues in case of future pandemics. Secondly, the team will examine the short-term and persisting effects that the pandemic has had on loneliness and social isolation in the Belgian and European population, as well as the unequal distribution of these consequences based on socio-economic status (SES), living arrangements, gender, and age. This analysis will yield valuable insights for policymakers, identifying specific groups that require targeted support and resilience-building measures. Moreover, by comparing results across regions and European countries, the team will evaluate the relative performance of Belgium as a whole and its regions compared to other parts of Europe. Thirdly, the team will delve deeper into inequalities in two specific age groups that have been disproportionately affected during the initial phase of the pandemic: adolescents (in secondary education) and older adults (aged 65 years and over). The aim is to gain insights into the meso- and macro-contextual conditions that have shaped these inequalities during the COVID-19 pandemic. This contextual approach will help the team develop policy recommendations for structural interventions, addressing poor social wellbeing and related inequalities (during times of crisis), as a complementary alternative to biomedical and psychological remedies. Fourthly, the team will examine how contextual conditions have influenced loneliness, social isolation and associated inequalities during the COVID-19 pandemic by organizing focus groups with relevant Belgian and European policymakers and stakeholders, refining the policy recommendations accordingly. Overall, the DistantButClose project will contribute to pandemic preparedness and tackle the pressing issue of the loneliness and social isolation epidemic.

Documentation

• Presentation kick-off meeting

PanHOME
Trajectories of homeless people and of local welfare networks adaptations during the pandemic

• Theme: Inequalities and Vulnerabilities
• Duration of the project: 36 months
• Budget: 846 320 €
• Funded partners: UCLouvain (Coordinator); UGent; KU Leuven; ULiège
• Non-funded partners :
• Contact: Martin Wagener

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Summary

The team is composed of sociologists and social work researchers who have a longstanding experience in homelessness and public policy research. The team has undertaken several research projects during the pandemic (with adapted methods), yet the actual project is going to deepen different unevenly distributed knowledge due to the pandemic and different health- and welfare policy measures.

Relatively few knowledge is identified about the workforce of social workers, educators and others in contact with homeless people during the covid-19 pandemic. Contrary to many sectors which had to close (partially) during the first lockdown, in the homeless sector the majority of services (especially shelters) were considered as essential and remained (partially) open. They had to implement new procedures and organisation regarding their mission and corresponding rules to the sanitary situation. New services were created, existing services adapted their function and new collaborations were put into place with public and private partners, especially new forms of collaboration with health, diagnostical and quarantine services were created in urgent ways. The pandemic showed very quickly that “stay at home” signified a supplementary stake for people experiencing homelessness. Existing inequalities and differences regarding gender (re-)appeared. The pandemic also showed new forms of non-take-up (of crisis measures and other), an ongoing invisibilization of women and amplified the digital divide. The regional governments of Brussels, Flanders and Wallonia as well as the federal service for social integration have all insisted on integrated approaches of homelessness before the pandemic, part of our research project is to question how the pandemic affected these approaches, what could be learned in order to better understand (non-)take-up of rights? How did the workforce as well as the people experiencing homelessness adapt to changing situations?

The research will be lead through three main momentums. In the first year, the team investigate local welfare assemblies during the pandemic through a broad approach in 15 Belgian cities (chosen together with the Follow-up committee). In the second year the team will deepen the knowledge and prepare the implementation in 4-5 cities. It is important at this stage that these cities and the local actors show that they want to deepen a participatory action research with the researchers and the follow-up-committee in order to implement during year three concrete action plans based on the overall findings of the project. By gathering very different actors (inadequate housed people, social workers and responsible persons for the implementation for public policy) the recommendations will acquire a strong legitimacy and can be better taken into account by the policies. The PPS Social Integration, the FPS Health, the Crossroads Bank for social security and Bosa (digitalisation) and other European, federal or regional institutes will be able to better take into account inadequate housing and social exclusion situations through our findings and implementation strategy.

Documentation

• Presentation kick-off meeting

THRIVE
Taking stock to foster health and trust for an inclusive post-covid society

• Theme: Well-being
• Duration of the project: 36 months
• Budget: 1 501 715 €
• Funded partners: UCLouvain (Coordinator); ULB; KU Leuven; UGent
• Non-funded partners: ULB; UCLouvain; UC Merced; Griffith University; Utrecht University; London School of Economics; Union Professionnelle des Psychologues Cliniciens Francophones; Vlaamse Vereniging van Klinisch Psychologen
• Contact: Oliver Luminet

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Summary

The THRIVE project seeks to provide evidence-based recommendations for post-Covid preparedness in the domains of well-being and democratic governance by fully actualizing the potential of the large-scale Motivation Barometer project , together with additional post-covid waves
The project has four major descriptive and predictive overarching objectives:

• shed light on the social and psychological heterogeneity of the population during the COVID-19 crisis through the identification of distinctive groups characterized by unique trajectories, and examine whether the identified trajectories vary as a function of intersectional markers of differentiation at the socio-demographic (e.g., age, gender, ethnicity, education, religion, …) and psychological level (e.g., trust, identification, subjective social status, …)
• examine whether different trajectories influenced people’s dynamic reactions as the pandemic unfolded, thereby affecting their mental health, thus identifying resilient and psychologically vulnerable groups;
• associate several disciplines (health psychology, motivation psychology, social psychology, and sociology), involving complementary models and methods (quantitative and qualitative approaches);
• identify contextual factors such as communication styles or stringency of sanitary measures feeding into people’s experiences, together with interacting predictors, such as trust and ideologies;

The relevant findings will be exploited and enhanced through both dissemination in scientific (papers in top journals in psychology and sociology, special issues, conference, symposia, …) and non-scientific audiences (highly accessible reports including practical recommendations that can be implemented by key stakeholders). Extensive previous experience and collaborations with stakeholders from the team members will facilitate co-creation processes in shaping recommendations and interventions.

Documentation

WINE-COVID
The Lasting Impact of COVID-19 on the Workplace: Analysing Effects on Well-being and Inequality among New Labour Market Entrants

• Theme: Well-being; Inequalitites and Vulnerabilities
• Duration of the project: 36 months
• Budget: 999 900 €
• Funded partners: KULeuven; VUB; ULiège
• Non-funded partners :
• Contact: Ezra Dessers; Mikkel Barslund

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Summary

The COVID-19 pandemic brought about significant changes in people's lives and work as governments worldwide implemented strict measures to control the spread of the virus. This changed the way people lived and worked overnight and resulted in a fundamental shift in the organisation of work for many occupations. Paid work has been transformed and made more flexible in time and in space with many employees working from home for a part of their work week. For young individuals entering the labour market, these transitions could have significant consequences.

The sharp increase in hybrid work and education reduces face-to-face contact and opportunities for informal advice and bonding with fellow students, colleagues and managers, which can impact well-being, motivation, learning, and long-term career development. It also has the potential to exacerbate existing inequalities or create new ones. Furthermore, this change coincided with a substantial increase in student work in Belgium, facilitated by legislative changes that relaxed restrictions on its amount and timing. The specific modalities and consequences of student work remain understudied, however, with limited research on job quality and its contribution to students' future careers. In the current WINE-COVID project the team intend to substantially increase our knowledge on these topics by studying the long-term impact of COVID-19 on the work organisation, job quality, career prospects and well-being of student workers and labour market entrants.

This will be done by gradually narrowing the research scope from a more macro-level societal to a micro-level individual perspective. Such an approach allows for a multidisciplinary and mixed-methods study design relying on qualitative and quantitative data analyses that will lead to a holistic understanding of the needs, challenges and policy opportunities for this group of (emerging) young workers. As this target group has been found to report higher psychological and physical complaints, the project aims to explore how these experiences during the pandemic might make these (student) workers more susceptible to mental, social, and physical health issues during their transition from school to work or while balancing multiple student jobs.

Documentation

• Project website
• Presentation kick-off meeting