Sustainable Health and the Covid-19 Crisis

This edited collection offers interdisciplinary perspectives on some of the key health challenges faced by individuals, communities, and governments during the COVID-19 pandemic. Taking the Danish context as a starting point, it extrapolates to discuss the international relevance of a range of issues. The book contains 4 parts: - Part 1 looks at the societal reactions to COVID-19, discussing issues around health communication, legitimacy, ethics, and bio-politics - Part 2 approaches the health and well-being of specific groups during the crisis - Part 3 assesses how the crisis stimulated sustainable solutions to key problems, from digital methods for delivery of healthcare, to changes to the food supply chain - Part 4 looks broadly at how historical developments in the study of epidemiology and current scientific perspectives enable the understanding and, to some extent, management of the COVID-19 pandemic With contributions from scholars across the social sciences, health sciences, and humanities, each chapter provides not only insight into a particular issue, but also the theories and scientific methods applied to understand and overcome the COVID-19 crisis. It will be important reading for both scholars and policy makers, informing an appropriate response to future health crises.

Nicole Thualagant is an associate professor and head of Study in Critical Health Studies at the University of Roskilde. She is also a member of the scientific committee in the Nordic Health Promotion Research Network meeting twice a year at WHO in Copenhagen. As a sociologist, her interest is in health policies, more especially how health policies interfere with more intimate spheres of social life in contemporary welfare societies. Pelle Korsbæk Sørensen is a lecturer in nursing at the Research & Development Unit at University College Absalon, Denmark. He is the former chairperson of the Nordic Sociological Association (2016-2018). He makes use of different methodological approaches, and he teaches research design and mixed methods. His interest is in sociology of health and his main areas of research are moral and ethical distress and psychosocial working environment among health professionals. Troels Sune Mønsted is an associate professor in digitalization of healthcare at the Department of Informatics, University of Oslo. He is a member of the board of the Danish Society for Digital Health and is affiliated to the HISP Centre (Health Information Systems Program), Oslo. In his research, he combines qualitative methods and action research in investigating design and use of patient-centred technologies and information infrastructures in healthcare.

1.Introductory thoughts on exploring the COVID-19 crisis through interdisciplinary lenses. Part 1.Societal reactions: Communication and legitimacy in a time of crisis. 2.Face masks in the Danish COVID-19 context: A representative of the crisis and communication strategies. 3. Pastoral manifestations of legitimacy in a welfare state in crisis. 4.Common ethical principles and biopolitics in times of COVID-19. Part 2.People and everyday life: Intimacy and care when the crisis hits. 5.The inclusive potentials of extraordinary life: Young disabled lives in pandemic times. 6.Ageing abjection from a COVID-19 crisis perspective. 7.Challenges to relationship intimacy during COVID-19: LATT (living apart together transnationally couples). Part 3.Urgent changes and sustainable solutions: Crisis as a gamechanger for sustainable development? 8.COVID-19: A disruption of interprofessional collaboration in health care 9.Digital vigilance: Learnings from the COVID-19 pandemic. 10. COVID-19 in the meat industry: Health and sustainable development in the food sector? 11.The COVID-19 lockdown and pathways for sustainable transition. Part 4.Development of knowledge: Scientific changes in epidemiology and microbiology and lasting effects. 12.Framing the roots of critical COVID-19 public health concepts: Intersecting history and epidemiology. 13.The gut feeling during the COVID-19 pandemic.