In the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, the largest funder of social science, the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), has awarded an Outstanding Societal Impact Prize to the Social Biobehavioural Research Group** at University College London (UCL), United Kingdom, a WHO Collaborating Centre for Arts and Health.
The prize recognizes the phenomenal impact of the team’s COVID-19 Social Study*. The study, led by Dr Daisy Fancourt, Director of the WHO Collaborating Centre and member of WHO/Europe’s Technical Advisory Group on Behavioural and Cultural Insights and WHO’s Technical Advisory Group on Mental Health in COVID-19, tracked the mental health and behaviours of 72 000 people for 2 years during the pandemic. Through regular follow-up and over 400 interviews, the team collected 1.2 million surveys, which enabled them to generate powerful insights into the population-level impacts of the pandemic on people’s daily lives.
“I’m delighted that the efforts of our team, and of course our 72 000 participants, have been recognized by the ESRC,” says Dr Fancourt. “To be able to track the psychological and social effects of the pandemic in real time and inform government policies was an absolute privilege. I’m proud of the team and want to thank them, our participants and funders for their support.”
The surveys showed, for instance, how the pandemic affected the mental health of different groups in the United Kingdom population in different ways, with those in lower socioeconomic positions, women and young people suffering more with anxiety and depression. The team also studied differences in peoples’ compliance to government-imposed social restrictions as time went on, finding that overall compliance remained remarkably high throughout, but was impacted by factors, such as trust in the government.
The team’s special interest in arts and health led them to include specific questions about peoples’ arts engagement. They found that nearly a third of participants engaged in more arts activities after the start of lockdown, due to having more time and increased access to digital arts resources. Notably, some of these people had mental health conditions, a disability or lower household income. Study participants described the arts as a coping mechanism that distracted them from the pandemic, allowing them to learn new skills and connect with others. This builds on the existing evidence base for the role of the arts in emotional regulation and correlates with the team’s prior important work analyzing the impact of the arts on people’s health.
Over time the study became a key source of information for United Kingdom and international policy-makers and health leaders, helping them to understand the potential psychological impact of continued lockdowns. Today, the COVID-19 Social Study is one of the most widely used social science datasets from the pandemic informing United Kingdom policy. Its influence has also been felt beyond the United Kingdom.
“This impressive work contributes in so many ways to highlighting the importance of social and behavioural insights in responding to health emergencies as well as in protracted health challenges,” explains Katrine Bach Habersaat, Regional Advisor for the Behavioural and Cultural Insights Unit at WHO/Europe. “Putting people at the centre and gaining nuanced insights into how they feel and behave can always help us respond better.”
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* The COVID-19 Social Study is a UCL-led project funded and supported by the Nuffield Foundation, the Wellcome Trust and UK Research and Innovation, to study the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the United Kingdom population.
** The Social Biobehavioural Research Group at UCL (a WHO Collaborating Centre for Arts and Health) sits within UCL’s Department of Behavioural Science and Health, in the Institute of Epidemiology and Health. The group investigates how social factors impact people’s health, looking both at assets, such as social connections, arts and cultural engagement, communities, leisure, nature engagement, and social prescribing; and deficits, such as loneliness, isolation, and social restrictions during health emergencies. The group was awarded Collaborating Centre status from the WHO in 2021.