Post-Doctoral Fellowship on the Mapping and Evaluating Policies to Respond to COVID-19 in Brazil and the United States with attention to Vulnerable Populations

• Grant number: 22/10997-1
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Post-Doctoral
• Start date: November 01, 2022
• End date: October 31, 2024
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Political Science - Public Policies
• Principal Investigator: Lorena Guadalupe Barberia
• Grantee: Tatiane Cristina Moraes de Sousa
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Associated research grant: 21/08772-9 - The COVID-19 pandemic response: the role of communication, health law, and public policy for the 3 Rs (recovery, renewal and resilience) of an inclusive society, AP.R
• Associated scholarship(s): 23/11399-3 - Exploring structural breaks in the analysis of the COVID-19 pandemic in Brazil, Argentina, and the United States, BE.EP.PD

Abstract

This post-doctoral fellowship is directed at investigating the government policies targeted at containment, public health, and economic policies at the national and subnational levels in Brazil and the United States with the aim of developing indicators that map the policies enacted by governments comparatively during the COVID-19 pandemic as part of the study on the "The COVID-19 Pandemic Response: The Role of Communication, Health Law, and Public Policy for the 3 Rs (Recovery, Renewal and Resilience) of an Inclusive Society." To investigate trends in policy-making across time and countries since the early onset of the pandemic, and in its ongoing stages, policy activities must be classified into a single, universal and consistent coding scheme in each of these three areas. In contrast to studies that have emphasized event studies to study COVID-19 policies, this project will develop indicators that measure the intensity of the specific policies across time, and evaluate citizen and elite adherence to these policies. The end goal of this comparative policy mapping project will be monitoring policy processes by tracking the actions that governments take in response to the challenges they faced at key moments of the pandemic and then using these measurements to evaluate how specific populations responded. These activities will be undertaken in close cooperation with the legal teams in Brazil and the United States as data will be analyzed from laws (e.g., bills and government decrees), as well as judicial rulings (e.g., rulings from the judiciary branches in each country). Special efforts will also be directed at identifying what types of data governments are legally obligated to collect and publish on infectious diseases and emergency response, and in assessing the degree to which these data neglected the needs of vulnerable populations. The end goal of these efforts will be a database of comparative policy processes of the actions that governments take in response to the challenges they faced at key moments of the pandemic and systematic evaluations of how these policies affected vulnerable populations.