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About the COVID-19 and Children Research Library

About the Children and COVID-19 Library Database

 

In addition to the Covid-19 rapid response microsite – which provides updates from UNICEF's Office of Research-Innocenti on our rapid research agenda, related publications, blogs, virtual events and relevant recent scientific resources – the office has also produced a Children and COVID-19 Research Library, which collects and curates research from around the world on COVID-19 and its impacts on children and adolescents.

Background

The Children and COVID-19 Research Library was conceived as UNICEF Innocenti’s contribution to enabling quick and easy access, in one place, to the latest scientific research regarding the impacts of the current pandemic on children and adolescents.  Given the growing number of excellent biomedical repositories on the subject of COVID-19, the current focus of this library is on the socio-economic impacts of the pandemic on children and young people, drawn largely from the social science literature. 

Since the content has not been subject to a detailed quality assessment or in-depth peer review, we have chosen to focus on scientific content backed by empirical research, as opposed to more generic opinion pieces or news articles.  We have adopted this position given the urgent need to share emerging findings quickly, outside of the standard peer review process, while acknowledging our responsibility to help prevent the flood of misinformation and facilitate evidence-informed decision-making. 

We see this library as an important global public good for children and, as such, have chosen to not only feature evidence generated by UNICEF, but also to include that of colleagues working to minimize the impact of COVID-19 on children and adolescents from research institutions worldwide.

How content is selected

The database aims to provide a focused selection of research targeted towards a development audience with a specific interest in children and adolescents. The research selected includes the core competency areas of UNICEF –  including but not limited to: child protection, education, social and economic policy, child poverty,  WASH, health, mental health and well-being, nutrition, and migration.

We screen out opinion-based journalistic articles and blogs, multimedia material, technical guidelines, advocacy briefs and non-evidence-based material, as well as highly specialized scientific articles (ie: virology, genetics, clinical or biomedicine etc.),  which are already widely featured in other repositories.

Content is selected on a bi-weekly basis from research repositories, academic journals, and institutional websites, including from UN organizations and NGOs.

While our primary audience is UNICEF staff and development actors, we also hope the library will be useful for policy makers, practitioners, educators and programme managers working with children. Our aim is to feature academic articles, reports and policy documents with a clear potential to inform programmatic and policy work for children.

 

Other resources

We also encourage users to check out the following additional useful links to other recommended repositories synthesizing evidence on COVID-19:

  • COVID-END (COVID-19 Evidence Network to support Decision-making) including a ‘living’  repository of COVID-19 knowledge hubs
  • WHO COVID-19 database focusing on biomedical/clinical and other health-related research
  • Epistemonikos  L*OVE platform on COVID-19  focusing on biomedical/health and other health-related research.
  • Evidence Aid’s COVID-19 Evidence Collection giving plain language summaries of relevant systematic reviews, particularly in disasters and humanitarian response
  • PubMed LitCovid hub focusing on biomedical/clinical and other health-related research
  • Social Science in Humanitarian Action Platform SSHAP
  • Campbell Collaboration COVID-19 response, including a living map and database of all COVID-19 research from around the world in the areas of clinical research, public health, economics and social aspects
  • EPPI-Centre’s living systematic map of COVID-19 evidence
  • Cochrane COVID Rapid Reviews- focusing on biomedical/clinical and other health-related research
  • Save the Children Resource Centre – more generic database, searchable for COVID-19 practitioner and policy content
  • COVID-19 and children from UNICEF Data 

We hope you find this library useful and would welcome feedback as the prototype continues to evolve and adapt in coming months.

 

 



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