CDE Affiliates Undertake New Research Projects to Address Pandemic

Several CDE researchers are undertaking new projects to address the myriad of challenges to population health stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic.

John Eason is co-investigator on the project “RAPID: Estimating the Reciprocal Relationship between COVID-19 Infections of Prisoners and Staff and Infections in the Surrounding Communities.” With funding from the National Science Foundation, Eason and PI Danielle Wallace (Arizona State University) will examine the reciprocal relationship between COVID-19 infections among prisoners, correctional staff, and communities where prisons are located. By developing a data driven dynamic disease model and assessing the efficacy of potential best practices for infection control, Eason and Wallace hope their findings will help communities and congregate facilities, like prisons, develop policies to manage COVID-19.

Malia Jones, along with over a dozen colleagues spanning eight time zones, developed the information resource Dear Pandemic to answer common questions about the coronavirus pandemic. The group brings together experts from a range of fields, including demography, economics, public health, and nursing. Since their launch on March 13, the group has written more than 700 posts providing accessible, evidenced-based, and practical pandemic information for the general public. Topics range from explaining excess mortality to housekeeping advice, and are also available in Spanish. Dear Pandemic’s work has been featured in hundreds of national media outlets, including Newsweek, the New York Times, and the Washington Post, in addition to international news organizations like the BBC, CBC, and the Daily Mail.

The Survey of the Health of Wisconsin (SHOW), a statewide public health survey designed to help improve health in Wisconsin and throughout the world, has undertaken two new initiatives under the leadership of Director Kristen Malecki, associate professor in the Department of Population Health Sciences. The first is a set of online surveys that will track health changes related to the pandemic over the coming year. The surveys address economic impacts, perceptions and information about the virus, behavior change, and mental health coping strategies. Any past SHOW participants—in 2019, there were over 6,500 adults and children involved—who consented to be contacted about future studies could participate. Malecki and the research team hope the new data will shed light on how the pandemic impacts the social determinants of health.

Together with the Wisconsin Department of Health Services and the Wisconsin State Laboratory of Hygiene, SHOW is also conducting the study “Past Antibody COVID-19 Community Survey.” The project aims to determine the prevalence of COVID-19 antibodies throughout the state. SHOW plans to recruit past survey participants from ten randomly selected counties and the city of Milwaukee who will receive quarterly testing over the course of the year. The Communicable Disease Division of the state lab will be preforming the antibody testing to help uncover how many people were infected with COVID-19. Preliminary findings from SHOW’s new initiatives may be found here.

Several graduate students have also initiated projects that address the pandemic. Lindsay Cannon and Emma Romell fielded an original survey to investigate how changes in the gendered division of household labor since the COVID-19 pandemic began are associated with changes in couples’ relationship quality. Preliminary findings suggest that women who report their male partners have taken on more household labor since the pandemic began also report that their relationships have improved.

Annaliese Grant developed an online survey recruited through social media to look at media use before and during the pandemic. It explores how demographic characteristics shape the ways individuals use and have changed their media use during a time of great global stress. The survey was collected during May–June 2020.

Ariane Ophir and Sarah Frank developed a mixed-methods project, “Dating in the Time of COVID-19” to study dating and intimacy during the pandemic. Ophir and Frank aim to understand how single people are navigating the risks and challenges of COVID-19 while dating, the role of dating apps, and how people perceive the pandemic’s impact on the future of dating and intimacy. They are particularly interested in how these experiences vary by gender and sexuality.