As we entered the third year of the global Covid-19 pandemic, 2022 was set to be another year of discourse about the social and political dimensions of health and humanitarian crises. The research and engagement conducted through the IDS-partnership Social Science in Humanitarian Action Platform (SSHAP), as well as the evidence-on-demand requests the programme received, definitely proved this to be true.
A variety of other health and humanitarian crises also came to the fore as the year progressed, which SSHAP responded to in various ways. Throughout the monkeypox outbreak, SSHAP supported the World Health Organisation (WHO) and others working in the field with a set of briefings, and contributed to a WHO social science technical working group roundtable ahead of a meeting of the WHO R&D Roadmap. As well as providing rapid support and evidence for other crises such as the war in Ukraine, famine in the Horn of Africa, and the recent outbreak of the Sudan strain of Ebola in Uganda, we also achieved positive milestones as a programme, including:
- SSHAP’s funding was renewed for another two years, which enables the programme to continue and expand its work on embedding social science in humanitarian and health responses.
- SSHAP received two awards, the 2022 ARHE Policy Brief Award for a briefing on Covid-19 vaccine mistrust, and Co-Investigator, Juliet Bedford, received the Marsh Award for Anthropology in the World.
- Two cohorts of social scientists and humanitarian practitioners successfully completed the SSHAP fellowship, one of which was the first Francophone fellowship.
- Progress was made towards launching two regional hubs, which has involved collaborating with local partners. The Central and East Africa Regional Hub will be launching in early January 2023.
- The SSHAP Forum was launched, an email group for the network where social scientists and humanitarian actors can interact and share their questions, experiences, and challenges from contexts across the globe.
- 27 outputs were published throughout the year, and SSHAP received over 61,000 downloads of resources on OpenDocs in 2022.
Looking towards 2023, the programme aims to build on its strategy to better integrate social science into humanitarian and health responses, regardless of which new or unprecedented emergencies occur. The SSHAP team also look forward to the many activities and engagements planned, including the launch of the first Arabic fellowship, a new call for Social Science in Action workshops, and the launch of the Central and East Africa Regional Hub. The team is excited to continue working with our funders, partners, and network to co-create social science approaches that are relevant to the challenges of our unprecedented times.
This news item was originally published on the Social Science in Humanitarian ActionPlatform (SSHAP) website.
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