Frontiers in Sociology 

About: Frontiers in Sociology is an academic journal published by Frontiers Media. The journal publishes majorly in the area(s): Medicine & Computer science. It has an ISSN identifier of 2297-7775. It is also open access. Over the lifetime, 911 publications have been published receiving 4838 citations.

Poverty and Covid-19: Rates of Incidence and Deaths in the United States During the First 10 Weeks of the Pandemic

Abstract: The Covid-19 pandemic in the winter and spring of 2020 represents a major challenge to the world health care system that has not been seen perhaps since the influenza pandemic in 1918. The virus has spread across the world, claiming lives on all continents with the exception of Antarctica. Since its arrival in the United States, attention has been paid to how Covid-19 cases and deaths have been distributed across varying socioeconomic and ethnic groups. The goal of this study was to examine this issue during the early weeks of the pandemic, with the hope of shedding some light on how the number of cases and the number of deaths were, or were not related to poverty. Results of this study revealed that during the early weeks of the pandemic more disadvantaged counties in the United States had a larger number of confirmed Covid-19 cases, but that over time this trend changed so that by the beginning of April, 2020 more affluent counties had more confirmed cases of the virus. The number of deaths due to Covid-19 were associated with poorer and more urban counties. Discussion of these results focuses on the possibility that testing for the virus was less available in more disadvantaged counties later in the pandemic than was the case earlier, as the result of an overall lack of adequate testing resources across the nation.

Beware Zombies and Unicorns: Toward Critical Patient and Public Involvement in Health Research in a Neoliberal Context

Abstract: Patient and Public Involvement (PPI) in UK National Health Service (NHS) research has become an imperative in policy and practice However, lack of clarity on what PPI is (or might be) has given rise to a poorly monitored, complex field of activity, variously framed by the expectations of policy makers, funders, host organisations, researchers, health professionals, individual recruits, volunteers, activists and third sector organisations The normative shift towards PPI has taken place within a neoliberal policy context, the implications of which needs to be explicitly considered, particularly after the Brexit referendum which has left policy makers and researchers wondering how to better appeal to a distrustful public subjected to ‘post-truth’ and ‘dog whistle’ politics This commentary examines the prospects for a more critical approach to PPI which addresses context, is evidence-informed and mindful of persistent inequalities in health outcomes, at a time when models of PPI in NHS health research tend to be conceptually vague, derived from limited clinical and managerial settings, and centred on a construction of the abstract, rational, compliant and self-managing patient or lay-person

Power, Privilege and Knowledge: the Untenable Promise of Co-production in Mental "Health".

Abstract: This paper looks at the historical antecedents of the idea of ‘coproduction’ and gives some concrete examples in the field of mental health. These prior concepts and their concomitant exemplars show that ‘collaboration’ and ‘partnership’ failed because of the continued existence of unspoken power dynamics between professionals, researchers and policy makers and the service users who had been promised ‘partnership’. We then go onto ask whether coproduction is different and heralds a paradigm shift. We articulate the problems at the level of knowledge, particularly the Enlightenment privileging of reason and the individual cognitive subject. This privileging renders inferior those positioned as lacking these attributes, particularly the mad and the racialized mad. We interrogate modern ‘psy’ science and argue that it instantiates white privilege. We then develop an argument that the survivor movement and the emergence of a survivor, or mad knowledge base duplicates this white privilege epistemically, methodologically and in terms of embodied persons themselves. We offer some solutions and describe how we have grappled with these issues in a project aiming to map knowledge production by users, survivors and persons with psychosocial disabilities. It is an unfinished journey. But we conclude that coproduction between researchers and policy makers and those of us positioned as mad, particularly the racicalised mad, cannot happen when the environment is that of the elite, white academy dependant on the legacies of Enlightenment thinking and a continued Eurocentric lens. We seek not to coproduce but to change thinking and supports for psycho-social suffering local to the contexts of peoples lives.

Citizen science, education, and learning: challenges and opportunities

Abstract: Citizen science is a growing field of research and practice, generating new knowledge and understanding through the collaboration of citizens in scientific research. As the field expands, it is becoming increasingly important to consider its potential to foster education and learning opportunities. Although progress has been made to support learning in citizen science projects, as well as to facilitate citizen science in formal and informal learning environments, challenges still arise. This paper identifies a number of dilemmas facing the field—from competing scientific goals and learning outcomes, differing underlying ontologies and epistemologies, diverging communication strategies, to clashing values around advocacy and activism. Although such challenges can become barriers to the successful integration of citizen science into mainstream education systems, they also serve as signposts for possible synergies and opportunities. One of the key emerging recommendations is to align educational learning outcomes with citizen science project goals at the planning stage of the project using co-creation approaches to ensure issues of accessibility and inclusivity are paramount throughout the design and implementation of every project. Only then can citizen science realise its true potential to empower citizens to take ownership of their own science education and learning.

Public Participation in Health and Social Care: Exploring the Co-production of Knowledge

Abstract: Efforts to advance public participation in health and other policies have been associated with the production of many models and how-to-do-it guides for change. While these may have a helpful part to play in improving public and patient/user involvement in research, in this article it will be suggested that they tend to over-simplify things. Instead it is argued that an essential first step to advancing public participation in health is to put it in the context of developing modern democracy more generally. This article will seek to do this by identifying four key stages in the development of public participation in health and social care. These phases will be headlined as: 1. Working for universal suffrage in representative democracy and the achievement of social rights, like the right to decent housing, education and health; 2. Provisions for participatory democracy and community development; 3. Specific provisions for participation in health and social care; 4. State reaction and service user-led renewal as conflicts and competing agendas develop. While the proposed article will look particularly at UK developments to do this, it will also draw upon international experience and highlight the wider relevance of these phases of development. It will make connections between the extension of representative and participatory democracy, considering the different locations in which efforts to extend participation have helpfully developed, for example, in learning and training, and research and knowledge production. It will also consider how efforts to extend participation have also been undermined by pressures to tokenise and co-opt them; the continuing barriers discriminating against some groups and, ways in which service users and allies have nonetheless sought to overcome these difficulties to take forward more inclusive and diverse participation in health and social care. It will focus on some particularly promising areas of development internationally in order to do this in which co-production and the development of user-led knowledge are key.