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Abstract
Calls for solidarity have been an ubiquitous feature in the response to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, we know little about how people have thought of and practised solidarity in their everyday lives since the beginning of the pandemic. What role does solidarity play in people’s lives, how does it relate to COVID-19 public health measures and how has it changed in different phases of the pandemic? Situated within the medical humanities at the intersection of philosophy, bioethics, social sciences and policy studies, this article explores how the practice-based understanding of solidarity formulated by Prainsack and Buyx helps shed light on these questions. Drawing on 643 qualitative interviews carried out in two phases (April–May 2020 and October 2020) in nine European countries (Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, The Netherlands, German-speaking Switzerland and the UK), the data show that interpersonal acts of solidarity are important, but that they are not sustainable without consistent support at the institutional level. As the pandemic progressed, respondents expressed a longing for more institutionalised forms of solidarity. We argue that the medical humanities have much to gain from directing their attention to individual health issues, and to collective experiences of health or illness. The analysis of experiences through a collective lens such as solidarity offers unique insights to understandings of the individual and the collective. We propose three essential advances for research in the medical humanities that can help uncover collective experiences of disease and health crises: (1) an empirical and practice-oriented approach alongside more normative approaches; (2) the confidence to make recommendations for practice and policymaking and (3) the pursuit of cross-national and multidisciplinary research collaborations.
- COVID-19
- health policy
- medical humanities
- medical ethics/bioethics
- public health
Data availability statement
Data are available on reasonable request. Data are stored in a secure location. All members of the consortium have access to the data. Access to the data is restricted to the members of the consortium to ensure the confidentiality and anonymity of the research participants.
This article is made freely available for personal use in accordance with BMJ’s website terms and conditions for the duration of the covid-19 pandemic or until otherwise determined by BMJ. You may use, download and print the article for any lawful, non-commercial purpose (including text and data mining) provided that all copyright notices and trade marks are retained.
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Data availability statement
Data are available on reasonable request. Data are stored in a secure location. All members of the consortium have access to the data. Access to the data is restricted to the members of the consortium to ensure the confidentiality and anonymity of the research participants.
Footnotes
Twitter @Kat_Kieslich
Contributors All authors were involved in the planning, conception and design of the manuscript. The first author led the writing and the review process. All coauthors were involved in data acquisition and contributed to data analysis. All authors contributed to the original draft of the manuscript. All coauthors read and approved the final version of the manuscript. KK accepts full responsibility for the finished work, had access to the data, and controlled the decision to publish.
Funding The German and Swiss parts of the SolPan study are supported by the Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung under Grant number 01Kl20510.The Dutch part of the SolPan study is supported by the European Research Council under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme, Grant number 804985.The Irish team gratefully acknowledges support for this project from the European Research Council under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme, Grant agreement number 771217.The British team gratefully acknowledges funding from the COVID-19 Research Response Fund University of Oxford, Grant number 0009534, and from the Wellcome Trust, Grant number 203132/Z/16/Z.The Belgium team gratefully acknowledges funding from the KULeuven BOF Fund, Grant number 3H200158.Dr Luca Marelli and the Italian team gratefully acknowledge funding under the Cariplo Foundation Social Science Research Grant, 2020-1314.Dr Bettina M. Zimmermann gratefully acknowledges funding for this project from the University of Basel Research Fund for Junior Researchers, Grant number 3BE1003.
Competing interests None declared.
Patient and public involvement Patients and the public were not involved in the design phase of this study because the research project was set up at the onset of the pandemic in which co-production of research projects was difficult due to lockdowns. The interview guide for the first phase of the interviews was conceptualised by members of the SolPan consortium based on the available literature on solidarity, and based on the public discourse on solidarity in different countries. The interview guide for the second phase of interviews was informed in part by the findings of the first phase, and by priorities raised by respondents. The study findings continue to be disseminated to the participants, and to the public, in the form of blog posts, media communications, and academic publications. The precondition for this dissemination was that interviewees gave their consent to being informed about the outcome of the study findings at the end of the interview.
Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.
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