Library & Cultural Services: Sociology: Health. Covid. Wellbeing. Food

General

See also the Library subject guide for Health & Social Care

Access to Medicine Index
Ranks pharmaceutical companies efforts to promote access to medicines in developing countries.
Cochrane Library
High quality reports and analysis (freely available) summarise the best research evidence to aid decision-making
Cost of Living
Website presenting independent views of the politics, sociology & economics of medicine, health & healthcare. Includes contributions from Essex academics, collaboration with the Medical Sociology Group and some funding from British Sociological Association
DHS Program (Demographic & Health Surveys)
US-based organisation that collects and disseminates health & population survey datasets for countries worldwide.
Euro Health Consumer Index
Leading annual analysis since 2005 of the performance of healthcare systems in 35 countries, based on 48 indicators.
Global Health Data Exchange (GHDx)
Project of Institute for Health Metrics & Evaluation (University of Washington) to collate health data for countries worldwide
Global Women's Health Index
Cross-country index for comparing women's health across 5 broad dimensions. Developed by Hologic with Gallup World Poll (2020-)
Health Inequalities Portal
Hub for research on health inequalities in Europe. Managed by EuroHealthNet, a not-for-profit partnership of organisations, agencies and statutory bodies working on public health, disease prevention, promoting health, and reducing inequalities
National Library of Medicine Digital Collections
See also the NLM open data portal
OECD Health
Some free data and publications, mainly covering OECD member countries.
The Polyphony
Website hosted by Durham University and supported by the Wellcome Trust that takes a critical look at issues pertinent to the medical humanities
World Health Organisation
In particular its Global Health Observatory portal to datasets, including World health statistics. See also its flagship publication, the World health report and its International Classification of Diseases (ICD). Also MiNDbank for mental health resources, and Global Abortion Policies database.

Covid-19

The resources listed below are only a small selection from what is available, with an emphasis on the social sciences. Further resources, mainly focusing on medical aspects are listed on the Health subject guide.
For additional resources, see other subject guides – many of the organisations/websites listed on them will have Covid specific pages/resources e.g. http://www.oecd.org/coronavirus/en/

1. Bibliography/Lists of Sources/Websites /Feeds

Portals

UNRIC list of Covid databases (mostly UN & other international agencies)

General Publications
ArXiv https://arxiv.org/
https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/a5nqw/ useful compilation of open access resources
https://www.researchgate.net/community/COVID-19
CORD-19 Allen Institute for AI https://www.semanticscholar.org/cord19 (JSON file)
Scitrus/Atypon Coronavirus Pandemic feed          https://www.scitrus.com/special/novel%20coronavirus%20outbreak/
PanSurg REDASA https://www.pansurg.org/redasa/ collaboration between Imperial College London, Amazon Web Services &
others to assimilate the corpus of knowledge from traditional academic literature, websites and social media. In response to COVID-19 queries, REDASA will search over 400,000 data sources and rapidly output focussed answers

General Websites
Novel Coronavirus (Covid-19) web archive https://archive-it.org/collections/13529
UNICEF Covid-19 Vaccine Market Dashboard - interactive tool for partners, manufacturers and countries to follow up-to-date information on the COVID-19 vaccine and therapeutics market
Vaccination Demand Observatory https://vaccinationdemandobservatory.org/
Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness & Response https://theindependentpanel.org/
IZA working paper 6 country study of impact & opinions https://covid-19.iza.org/publications/dp13230/
Covid Behaviors dashboard on vaccine acceptance & related behaviors (Johns Hopkins University Center for Communication Programs) https://covidbehaviors.org/ (data collection ceased 25 June 2022). See also JHUs broader Coronavirus Resource Center. Updating ceased 10 March 2023 but raw data can still be accessed
UK
UK Covid literature & government publications: https://socialsciencecurrentwareness.blogspot.com/
UK Web Archive (BL) https://www.webarchive.org.uk/en/ukwa/collection/2446

British Academy detailed report - The Covid Decade: understanding the long-term societal impacts
https://www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/documents/3238/COVID-decade-understanding-long-term-societal-impacts-COVID-19.pdf

Essex
https://www.essex.ac.uk/research/covid19/latest-research
Research Repository http://repository.essex.ac.uk/
ISER https://www.iser.essex.ac.uk/research/publications?action=search&controller=publications&s=Covid+19

Developing Countries

Global Social Response to Covid-19 Web Archive (Ivy Plus Libraries Confederation) https://libguides.princeton.edu/covid-ivy - global initiative capturing websites from under-represented countries, groups & languages in the Global South

2. Consumer Behaviour
Comscore https://www.comscore.com/Insights/Coronavirus

3. Data/Statistics

Our World in Data useful portal https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus
WHO Covid dashboard https://covid19.who.int/
UN Covid data hub https://covid-19-data.unstatshub.org/
see also report https://unstats.un.org/unsd/ccsa/documents/covid19-report-ccsa.pdf and volume 2 https://unstats.un.org/unsd/ccsa/documents/covid19-report-ccsa_vol2.pdf
Twitter data http://www.panacealab.org/covid19/
Social data during the COVID-19 pandemic, coordinated by Ben Geiger (University of Kent) & hosted on GoogleDocs

Public Medicines for Covid-19 https://publicmeds4covid.org/ interesting site maintained by Universities Allied for Essential Medicines, tracks public investments in vaccine research & companies worldwide

Europe

Eurobarometer survey of EU citizens opinions on Covid
https://op.europa.eu/en/publication-detail/-/publication/de6de962-32e4-11ec-bd8e-01aa75ed71a1/language-en/format-PDF/source-238406838

UK
Official UK government portal to Covid data https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/

Centre for Longitudinal Studies – Covid-19 survey in 5 major uk longitudinal cohort surveys. May 2020 and repeated at ongoing intervals https://cls.ucl.ac.uk/covid-19-survey/

Centre for Time Use Research 6 Wave Sequence Across the Covid Pandemic 2016-2021 https://beta.ukdataservice.ac.uk/datacatalogue/studies/study?id=8741
UK Data Service Covid-19 theme page https://www.ukdataservice.ac.uk/get-data/themes/covid-19.aspx which includes this teaching dataset
ONS Coronavirus page https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/conditionsanddiseases
Co-SPACE, UKRI funded survey looking at UK families during the pandemic https://www.psy.ox.ac.uk/research/topic-research-group/supporting-parents-adolescents-and-children-during-epidemics

Covid-19 vaccine reports https://reports.opensafely.org/ data on vaccine uptake, compiled by Bennett Institute for Applied Data Science (University of Oxford) for NHS England
National Audit Office Covid cost tracker https://www.nao.org.uk/covid-19/cost-tracker/

United States

Covid Tracking Project
Argonne National Laboratory Covid 19 Impact Analyses
Vaccine Hesitancy Visualisation Tool from COVID Collaborative and the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington School of Medicine
https://covid19.census.gov/ and 50 state survey https://covidstates.org/
Microsoft AI for Health Covid Data - uses publicly available data to offer infection & death statistics down to Congressional District level for the US (data also available for other countries)

Latin America

Covid 19 Observatory (University of Miami) focuses on Latin America http://observcovid.miami.edu/

4. Economics
Labour market https://ilostat.ilo.org/topics/covid-19/
CEPR Covid Economics https://cepr.org/content/covid-economics
UNCTAD https://unctad.org/programme/covid-19-response
https://unctad.org/programme/covid-19-response/impact-on-trade-and-development-2021 portal on effects on trade & development
WTO-IMF Covid-19 Vaccine Trade Tracker provides data on the trade and supply of COVID-19 vaccines by product, economy and arrangement type https://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/covid19_e/vaccine_trade_tracker_e.htm
Covid 19 & Remittances in Africa https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/fcb8e297b5c34516ae91a6f0a399a812
Covid-19 Economic Stimulus Index http://web.boun.edu.tr/elgin/COVID.htm developed by Turkish economists (last updated May 2021)
European Investment Bank Covid-19 Economic Vulnerability Index looks at countries outside the EU

Covid Jobs Research:UK is a collaborative research project spearheaded by academics in the Economics Department, University of Essex

5. Education
https://www.ifs.org.uk/publications/14848
Unesco https://en.unesco.org/covid19
UK Student Covid Insights Survey:
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/healthandwellbeing/bulletins/coronavirusandhighereducationstudents/england20novemberto25november2020
Higher Education https://www.studentcrowd.com/article/university-responses-to-covid-19
Unicef remote learning readiness index https://data.unicef.org/resources/remote-learning-readiness-index/
Covid-19 Global Education Recovery Tracker https://www.covideducationrecovery.global/
UniCovid: tracking Covid-19 at UK universities website with data through to Nov. 2020 on Covid in UK higher education

6. Ethics
Digital contact tracing https://muse.jhu.edu/book/75831

7. Film & Video

BFI Britain on Lockdown https://www.bfi.org.uk/bfi-national-archive/look-behind-scenes/britain-lockdown-online-video-archive crowd-sourcing the best videos from the public portraying different aspects of life under lockdown

8. Inequalities. Race & Ethnicity. Gender
IFS https://www.ifs.org.uk/inequality/covid-19-and-inequality/ see also Demos think tank
Gender and Covid-19 https://www.genderandcovid-19.org/ brings together academics from around the world, conducting real time gender analysis to identify and document the gendered dynamics of COVID-19
Data dashboard from UNDP https://data.undp.org/gendertracker/
UN Women report summarising Rapid Gender Assessment surveys in various countries:
https://data.unwomen.org/publications/women-and-girls-left-behind-glaring-gaps-pandemic-responses
Covid Tracker (US) https://covidtracking.com/
Violentadas en cuarantena - surveys reporting on gender-based violence during lockdown in Latin American countries

9. Language
https://podcasts.ox.ac.uk/series/translating-illness

10. Law
Covid-19 Law Lab https://covidlawlab.org/ project from UN/WHO and others, contains legal documents from over 190 countries worldwide on states of emergency, regulation of social distancing and lockdowns

11. Media/Information. Social media
Countering Disinformation (AHRC project) https://www.counteringdisinformation.com/blog/we-spent-six-weeks-asking-people-about-media-coverage-of-the-coronavirus-heres-what-they-told-us
Reporters Without Borders (RSF) https://rsf.org/en/tracker19-Coronavirus-Covid19

Kaiser Family Foundation analyses of media & disinformation in US: https://www.kff.org/coronavirus-covid-19/poll-finding/kff-covid-19-vaccine-monitor-media-and-misinformation/

https://sdmemes.mystrikingly.com/implications downloadable ebook compiled by US researcher on social distancing, as conveyed by memes on Facebook

International Press Institute Covid-19 Media Freedom Monitoring https://ipi.media/covid19-media-freedom-monitoring/

12. Mental Health

https://digital.nhs.uk/data-and-information/publications/statistical/mental-health-of-children-and-young-people-in-england/2020-wave-1-follow-up

13. Mobility. Movement
Links to free Facebook & Google GPS data https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-human-os/telecom/wireless/facebook-google-data-publics-movement-covid19
Google Covid-19 Community mobility reports https://www.google.com/covid19/mobility/
International Organization for Migration – Covid-19 Human Mobility Impacts https://migration.iom.int/
see also 2022 report https://publications.iom.int/books/covid-19-and-state-global-mobility-2021

14. Oral History/Digital Archives
Library of Congress Coronavirus Web Archive https://www.loc.gov/collections/coronavirus-web-archive collection of representative Web content (mostly US)

Journal of a plague year – curated by Arizona State University team, the largest international effort to compile a digital archive of life under the pandemic, comprising images, videos, oral histories, emails, texts, news stories and social media posts:
https://covid-19archive.org/s/archive/page/welcome

University of Minnesota-Duluth Northeastern Minnesota COVID-19 Community Archive Project
Western Wisconsin Covid 19 Archive Project https://lib02.uwec.edu/Omeka/s/C19/page/welcome

The British Library has major collections relating to Covid, including oral history projects, children's play, radio & TV broadcasts & recordings, archived websites https://www.bl.uk/collection-guides/covid-19-collections
Its Covid 19 Testimony Projects Database collates details of over 100 UK based Covid oral histories, personal diaries, artwork and photography (amongst other things)

https://www.scottisharchives.org.uk/latest/news/collecting-covid-19/

Renew Normal - the People’s Commission on Life After Covid-19 supported by Demos think tank, is surveying the UK population (website has selected extracts + reports)

Dr Michael Ward (Swansea University) CoronaDiaries https://collections.swansea.ac.uk/s/coronadiaries/page/home
The project has a total of 182 participants, from 14 different countries, who are aged between 11 and 89. Nearly 750 first-hand submissions - ranging from handwritten notebooks, diaries and dream logs to videos, social media posts, Tik Toks, music playlists - chronicle the first 12 months of the pandemic.

15. Politics
UK academics researching political aspects of Covid https://www.pandemicpolitics.net/
Hansard Society Coronavirus Statutory Instruments Tracker https://www.hansardsociety.org.uk/publications/data/coronavirus-statutory-instruments-dashboard
Oxford Covid-19 Government Response Tracker (OxCGRT) https://www.bsg.ox.ac.uk/research/research-projects/coronavirus-government-response-tracker
ACLED Covid-19 Disorder Tracker https://acleddata.com/analysis/covid-19-disorder-tracker/
UNU EPIC Tracker (Evidence Policy & Interventions) https://epictracker.org/#featured inventory of government public health, economic, social, and community measures taken to respond to COVID-19 across all countries.
See also the WHOs Public Health & Social Measures Calibration Tool for comparison of policy measures countries have taken
https://phsm.euro.who.int/calibrationTool

Freedom House report on Covid’s effect on democracy https://freedomhouse.org/report/special-report/2020/democracy-under-lockdown

16. Religion

Pandemic religion: a digital archive (US) https://pandemicreligion.org/s/contributions/page/welcome

Disabled

Disability Rights UK
Campaigning organisation.
Disability Visability Project
DVP is an online community of and for those with disabilities. At its core is a resource of shared oral histories, plus additional blog posts and other materials & resources
Jisc Accessible Organisations
Blog and links to support accessible learning in HE environments.
Leonard Cheshire Rewind
Leonard Cheshire homes are an important part of the story of disability services in the UK & the Rewind website is making digitally available films, oral histories, etc., to make this historical material accessible
UN Disability Statistics
Global coverage, from 1988 for some countries.

Food & Health

Bloomsbury Food Library
Major academic publisher with a strong focus on all aspects of food. Note: the library only offers access to selected titles
Centre for Diet & Activity Research (CEDAR)
ECSSV bibliography on vegetarianism & veganism
Useful bibliography up to about 2014 from Universität Wien
Family Food
Annual government survey, offering data and analysis from 1940 onwards (name of survey has changed over the years). See also print and online links in library catalogue, and datasets available via UK Data Service
Foodbase
Open access repository of the Food Standards Agency (FSA) offering research reports and papers funded by the UK government. Key topics include food safety, food regulation, diet and health, and the delivery of government food policy. Many documents full text.
Food Environment Assessment Tool (FEAT)
Interesting project from Cambridge University for visualisation of food retail across the UK down to very local levels.
National Diet & Nutrition Survey
Continuous, rolling survey led by Public Health England. Commenced 2008
National Obesity Forum
Sainsbury Archive
Extensive archive covering over 150 years of supermarket history
Student Journal of Vegan Sociology
New (2021) journal from the International Association of Vegan Sociologists, at the intersection of veganism, animal liberation and social issues
Sustain
Represents around 100 organisations working for better food and farming practices that enhance the health and welfare of people and animals

Mental Health

American Psychiatric Association - ebooks
We have access to the American Journal of Psychiatry (1997-) and other journals through the Library subscription to the APA Psychiatry Online platform, (as well as access to DSM-V and other book content)
American Psychiatric Association - journals
Includes the DSM-5 (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) as well as other e-book content. The database also gives access to APA journal content, including American Journal of Psychiatry

Depression Anxiety Stress Scale (DASS)
Developed by UNSW Australia & widely used to measure these aspects of mental health. As well as the full DASS-42 there are shorter versions (DASS-21 & DASS-10 & 12) in use too
Ethics of Suicide Digital Archive
Collaboration between OUP & University of Utah to provide freely available primary texts in this area.
Measuring Children & Young People's Subjective Wellbeing
Developed by the What Works Centre for Wellbeing to assist in gauging mental health of the young
Mental Health Foundation
Respected UK charity. Publications available online.
Mental Health of Children & Young People
Commissioned by NHS Digital, surveys in 2004, 2017 and 2020 (Covid follow up)
Mind
Leading mental health charity in the UK
National Institute of Mental Health
US government agency offering publications, data, etc.
Substance Abuse & Mental Health Services Administration
US administrative agency tasked with research & improved outcomes in this area
Young Minds
Charity supporting mental health of children & young people in UK, offers free access to policy research reports

See also the resources listed in the General and United Kingdom sections

Quality of Life

For urban areas specifically:

Mercer Quality of Living Index attempts to rank cities worldwide

QS Best Student Cities

For the UK:

Mappiness

Office for National Statistics Well-being data and publications (older releases on National Archives webpages)

London Wellbeing & Sustainability Measure from the GLA uses a range of indicators to assess Londoners' wellbeing since 2012. Some indicators permit analysis by borough or by socio-demographic variables such as age, tenure type, ethnicity, disability, sex, eligibility for free school meals, special educational needs, and Index of Multiple Deprivation quintiles.

United States:

Gallup-Sharecare Well-being Index of the health, economic & social well-being of American citizens using data from daily market research polls

Measure of America assesses well-being & quality of life in the US at national, state and local level

Happy Planet Index
2016 exercise from the New Economics Foundation, combines measures of well-being, life expectancy, inequality, and ecological footprint

United Kingdom

Care Quality Commission
Independent regulator of health & social care provision.
Carers UK
Support organisation for the 6.5m carers in the UK.
Department of Health & Social Care
Policy, guidance, publications & data from the official government department responsible for health & social care
Health Foundation
Independent charity committed to better health & better health care
Institute of Health Equity (UCL)
Established following the 2010 Marmot Review (Fair society, healthy lives).
The King's Fund
The King's Fund is an independent health charity who support the health and health care of the people of London and across the UK. Its activities include grant-giving to London projects, policy research, service development and audit programmes, and information and education services for people working in and with the health service. The site provides details of the Fund and covers current work and services, news and publications.
National Institute for Health & Care Excellence (NICE)
Provides national guidance & advice to improve health & social care. Search NICE Evidence for free selected health and social care evidence-based information.
National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Dissemination Centre
Data analysis & evidence synthesis to generate reviews & economic evaluations to inform policy. Upto 2014 this work was carried out by the
Centre for Reviews & Dissemination (University of York) - see its DARE and NHS EED databases for details
NHS Digital
Access to a wide range of full text reports, statistics, indicators, etc., produced by the Dept. of Health & Social Care and other bodies.
Nuffield Trust
Aims to improve healthcare in the UK through independent research and policy advice.
Office for National Statistics - Health & Social Care
Starting point for official UK statistics.
Politics of Health Group
Free access to its online publications from 2005.
Public Health England
Executive agency of the Department of Health & Social Care, aims to protect and improve the nation’s health and wellbeing, and reduce health inequalities.
UK Data Service - Health
Portal to some of the main health datasets held by UKDS.
Wellcome Library
Major resource in the UK for the study of the history of medicine. Quite extensive digital collections, such
as the Medical Officer of Health reports for London (1848-1972) and records from mental health hospitals and asylums. Also funds maajor projects, including The Cultural History of the NHS led by Warwick University (see also Manchester's NHS at 70 oral history project).

Sociology