Society & Infectious Diseases

The Social and Cultural Integrated Analytics Lab for Infectious Diseases focused on solving methods and measurement challenges in research on risk communications, community engagement, and integrated social analytics for public health and humanitarian emergencies. The project’s mission was to save more lives through more effective outbreak response; to improve outbreak preparedness at the global, national and subnational levels; to support the localization of outbreak response, and to ensure that outbreak response systems are transparent and accountable to affected populations.

Key Projects

Community Engagement Methods and Measurement

Community engagement is recognized as an essential component of public health emergency response. The SOCIAL-ID lab worked across anthropology, pubic health practice, social epidemiology, and psychometrics to innovate measures and methodologies that will continue to enable bio-psycho-social integration in disease modeling.

National and Subnational Community Engagement Capacity

This research into U.S. state and municipal case studies with COVID-19 community engagement identified novel innovations and challenges and barriers to community engagement in emergencies. It looked within the US experience and internationally to assess strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats to the implementation of a U.S. National Community Engagement Strategy.

Social Science Saves Lives: Assessing the Impact of Social Science in Public Health Emergencies

How does social science save lives during public health emergencies? The SOCIAL-ID lab worked to develop novel systems for assessing the impact of social science and integrated analytics in epidemic and disaster response.

Vaccine Acceptance

With partners in West Africa, the SOCIAL-ID lab is developed grounded trainings, curricula, and interventions to measurably improve vaccine acceptance.

Global Risk Communication and Community Engagement (RCCE) Capacity

Recent innovations in the WHO Joint External Evaluation Framework have revolutionized expectations for national and subnational systems for community engagement. The SOCIAL-ID Lab is developed frameworks to stress-test government RCCE readiness for public health emergencies and disasters.

Global Mental Health in Global Health Security

The SOCIAL-ID Lab advanced theoretical approaches to integrate global mental health into global health security policy and practice.

How to End a Pandemic Initiative

How to End a Pandemic is a new initiative based at the Center for Global Health Science and Security at Georgetown University. Kicking off in 2023, the initiative will expand public access to knowledge, innovation, and insights from pandemic preparedness and response. Under the leadership of CGHSS Director Rebecca Katz and PI Sharon Abramowitz, How to End a Pandemic is a leading convenor of scientific and cultural knowledge, insight, and experience about pandemic preparedness and response and global health security. 

Our Work

Oral History Archives – Growth and Acquisition:

The How to End a Pandemic Archive project collected and curated oral history research from a wide variety of stakeholders in pandemic preparedness and response in publicly available archives. Our aim was to share innovations and insights on pandemics with the public and research community to inform solutions to the global public health, climate change, and biosecurity challenges of the future through oral history interviews and archives acquisitions.

How to End a Pandemic Podcast

Check out our podcast repository, where we interviewed key actors in past, present, and future epidemics from a wide range of political, business, industry, and public health backgrounds. Experts shared experiences, stories, insights, and innovations to explore how we can learn from the past to better prepare for the next global health threat.

Pandemic Arts

We partnered with Georgetown’s Humanities Initiative, Medical Humanities Initiative, and the Department of History to establish the Pandemic Arts Initiative, which supported the creation of visual, performing, and literary arts inspired by the experiences of responders involved in pandemics and global infectious disease outbreaks. We also partnered with GU’s Earth Commons to develop curriculum and public engagement opportunities at the intersection of climate change and disease outbreaks across the Capitol region.

Who We Are

Oral Histories
Center Spotlight

Check out this article about the project.