COVID-19 outbreak impacts on vulnerable populations in the US and in Europe

Particularly glad to contribute with Thomas Martinez (one of my Ph.D Student at ERUDITE, UPEC, co-supervised by Yann Videau and Florence?Canou?-Poitrine) and France Pirenne (the French Blood Establishment, EFS) to this EUR LIVE (UPEC Life Trajectories & Health Vulnerability Graduate School) VOD addressing pandemic impacts and resilience on vulnerable populations.

To view the YouTube Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HiVR5II5Rks

Great opportunity for me to present the very first preliminary findings of a research currently conducted in the Department of Health Care Policy at Harvard Medical School (with Joseph Newhouse, Richard Frank and also Eric Defebvre from Paris I University), thanks to the Harkness Fellowship of the Commonwealth Fund.

This work deals with the influence of COVID-19 on mental health among 50 and older population in the US and in Europe (using HRS, SHARE and ELSA databases). After controlling for individual characteristics and pandemic intensity by countries, the health policies put in place to tackle the virus play a significant role in self-reported mental health during Summer 2020. Thus, comprehensive contact tracing reduces depression and sleeping troubles. On the contrary, face covering policies seem to increase depression and loneliness. In addition, the reinforcement of stringency policy (in terms of school closure, workplace closures, and travel bans) is likely to increase loneliness and sleeping troubles.

Congrats to Lina Penagos for the organization and Pierre Delahousse and his team as well for technical achievement.