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Children and COVID-19 Research Library

UNICEF Innocenti's curated library of COVID-19 + Children research

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The implications of COVID-19 for the care of children living in residential institutions

AUTHOR(S)
Philip S Goldman; Marinus H van Ijzendoorn; Edmund J S Sonuga-Barke

Published: April 2020   Journal: The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health
Around the world reports are emerging of numerous residential institutions for children being closed as a result of the novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Children appear to be being sent back to their communities without proper consideration of where they will reside, how their transition will be supported, and whether their safety will be monitored. Our view as international experts on institutional care reform is that although overall a shift from institutional to family-based care is a priority, these transitions need to be carefully planned and managed, with effective and sustained family preparation, strengthening, monitoring, and other support provided to ensure the best interests of the child are maintained.
Cite this research | Open access | Vol.: 4 | Issue: 6 | No. of pages: 1 | Language: English | Topics: Health, Child Protection | Tags: child care, child care services, COVID-19, COVID-19 response, education, pandemic
Effects of COVID‐19 Lockdown on Lifestyle Behaviors in Children with Obesity Living in Verona, Italy: A Longitudinal Study

AUTHOR(S)
Angelo Pietrobelli; Luca Pecorato; Alessandro Ferruzzi (et al.)

Published: April 2020   Journal: Obesity Society

 The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has had far-reaching health, social, and economic implications. Among them is the abrupt cessation of school programs for children and adolescents in Italy who by mandate had to remain in their homes during the “lockdown” aimed at containing and mitigating spread of COVID19. There are reasons to be concerned about housebound children and adolescents who have overweight and obesity; previous studies have supported the hypothesis that these youths will fare worse on weight-control lifestyle programs while at home compared with when they are engaged in their usual school curriculum.

1).
have supported the hypothesis that these youths will fare worse on
weight-control lifestyle programs while at home compared with when
they are engaged in their usual school curriculum (1)
COVID-19, School Closures, and Child Poverty: A Social Crisis in the Making

AUTHOR(S)
Wim Van Lancker; Zachary Parolin

Institution: The Lancet
Published: April 2020   Journal: The Lancet Public Health
While coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) continues to spread across the globe, many countries have decided to close schools as part of a physical distancing policy to slow transmission and ease the burden on health systems. The UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization estimates that 138 countries have closed schools nationwide, and several other countries have implemented regional or local closures. These school closures are affecting the education of 80% of children worldwide. Although scientific debate is ongoing with regard to the effectiveness of school closures on virus transmission, the fact that schools are closed for a long period of time could have detrimental social and health consequences for children living in poverty, and are likely to exacerbate existing inequalities. We discuss two mechanisms through which school closures will affect poor children in the USA and Europe.
Pandemics and Violence Against Women and Children

AUTHOR(S)
Amber Peterman; Alina Potts; Megan O'Donnell; Kelly Thompson; Niyati Shah; Sabine Oertelt-Prigione; Nicole van Geltert

Published: April 2020 UNICEF Innocenti Publication
Times of economic uncertainty, civil unrest and disaster are linked to a myriad of risk factors for increased violence against women and children (VAW/C). Pandemics are no exception. In fact, the regional or global nature and associated fear and uncertainty associated with pandemics provide an enabling environment that may exacerbate or spark diverse forms of violence. Understanding mechanisms underlying these dynamics are important for crafting policy and program responses to mitigate adverse effects. Based on existing published and grey literature, we document nine main (direct and indirect) pathways linking pandemics and VAW/C, through effects of (on):(1) economic insecurity and poverty-related stress, (2) quarantines and social isolation, (3) disaster and conflict-related unrest and instability, (4) exposure to exploitative relationships due to changing demographics, (5) reduced health service availability and access to first responders, (6) inability of women to temporarily escape abusive partners, (7) virus-specific sources of violence, (8) exposure to violence and coercion in response efforts, and (9) violence perpetrated against health care workers. We also suggest additional pathways with limited or anecdotal evidence likely to effect smaller sub-groups. Based on these mechanisms, we suggest eight policy and program responses for action by governments, civil society, international and community-based organizations. Finally, as research linking pandemics directly to diverse forms of VAW/C is scarce, we lay out a research agenda comprising three main streams, to better (1) understand the magnitude of the problem, (2) elucidate mechanisms and linkages with other social and economic factors and (3) inform intervention and response options. We hope this paper can be used by researchers, practitioners, and policymakers to help inform further evidence generation and policy action while situating VAW/C within the broader need for intersectional gender- and feminist-informed pandemic response.
Localized approach to Covid-19 humanitarian response
Published: March 2020
This document aims to provide some key considerations for the leadership of education clusters and humanitarian coordination groups in order to have a more inclusive and localized response to the COVID-19 global emergency.
COVID-19 response in Uganda: keeping children learning and safe while schools are closed
Published: March 2020
At this critical time, it is vital that international governments and donors increase funding to enable children in Uganda to continue learning. The closure of 51,000 institutions to prevent COVID-19 has left 15 million children out of school and facing increased risk of violence, exploitation and abuse. Closing schools must not mean suspending learning. There are evidenced home, community and media-based methods to ensure that children can keep learning and safe. Funding is urgently needed to ensure that these are in place from the start of the response before the opportunity closes.
Global rapid gender analysis for COVID-19
Institution: CARE, International Rescue Committee
Published: March 2020

This report is for humanitarians working in fragile contexts that are likely to be affected by the COVID-19 crisis. It is organised around broad themes and areas of focus of particular importance to those whose programming advances gender equality and reduces gender inequalities. It seeks to deepen the current gender analysis available by encompassing learning from global gender data available for the COVID-19 public health emergency.

Evidence on efforts to mitigate the negative educational impact of past disease outbreaks

AUTHOR(S)
Joe Hallgarten

Published: March 2020
This rapid review focusses on efforts to mitigate the educational impact of previous disease outbreaks, concentrating on school-age learners. It follows two companion papers that reviewed broader secondary effects and attempts to mitigate them (Rohwerder, 2020; Kelly, 2020). It aims to inform the education sector’s responses to the COVID-19 crisis, although there are important differences between previous disease outbreaks and the COVID-19 situation.
Coronavirus government response tracker
Institution: University of Oxford. Blavatnik School of Government
Published: March 2020

The Oxford COVID-19 Government Response Tracker (OxCGRT) systematically collects information on several different common policy responses that governments have taken to respond to the pandemic on 18 indicators such as school closures and travel restrictions. It now has data from more than 180 countries.

COVID-19 a gender lens: protecting sexual and reproductive health and rights, and promoting gender equality
Institution: UNFPA - United Nations Population Fund
Published: March 2020

Disease outbreaks affect women and men differently, and pandemics make existing inequalities for women and girls and discrimination of other marginalized groups such as persons with disabilities and those in extreme poverty, worse. This needs to be considered, given the different impacts surrounding detection and access to treatment for women and men. Women represent 70 percent of the health and social sector workforce globally and special attention should be given to how their work environment may expose them to discrimination, as well as thinking about their sexual and reproductive health and psychosocial needs as frontline health workers.

COVID-19: how to include marginalized and vulnerable people in risk communication and community engagement
Published: March 2020
Women, the elderly, adolescents, youth, and children, persons with disabilities, indigenous populations, refugees, migrants, and minorities experience the highest degree of socioeconomic marginalization. Marginalized people become even more vulnerable in emergencies. This is due to factors such as their lack of access to effective surveillance and early-warning systems, and health services. The COVID-19 outbreak is predicted to have significant impacts on various sectors.
A few lessons from responding to the Ebola crisis in West Africa
Institution: United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
Published: March 2020
As UNHCR prepares to respond to a potential outbreak of COVID 19 in refugee, internally displaced persons (IDP) settings, the Evaluation Service offered to do a quick extraction of key findings and recommendations emerging from independent assessments of similar responses – with specific reference to Ebola (other outbreaks may also be relevant but are beyond the scope of this first review).
Age profile of susceptibility, mixing, and social distancing shape the dynamics of the novel coronavirus disease 2019 outbreak in China

AUTHOR(S)
Juanjuan zhang; Maria Litvinova; Yuxia Liang (et al.)

Published: March 2020   Journal: MedRXiv
Strict interventions were successful to control the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak in China. As transmission intensifies in other countries, the interplay between age, contact patterns, social distancing, susceptibility to infection and disease, and COVID-19 dynamics remains unclear. To answer these questions, we analyze contact surveys data for Wuhan and Shanghai before and during the outbreak and contact tracing information from Hunan Province. Daily contacts were reduced 7-9 fold during the COVID-19 social distancing period, with most interactions restricted to the household. Children 0-14 years were 59% (95% CI 7-82%) less susceptible than individuals 65 years and over. A transmission model calibrated against these data indicates that social distancing alone, as implemented in China during the outbreak, is sufficient to control COVID-19. While proactive school closures cannot interrupt transmission on their own, they reduce peak incidence by half and delay the epidemic. These findings can help guide global intervention policies.
Considering inequalities in the school closure response to COVID-19

AUTHOR(S)
Richard Armitage; Laura B Nellums

Published: March 2020   Journal: The Lancet Global Health
As COVID-19 is declared a pandemic and several countries declare nationwide school closures, these measures are affecting hundreds of millions of children.1More countries are entering delay and mitigation phases of pandemic control, with an urgent need for proactive and multifaceted responses addressing children's social, economic, and health needs to avoid widening disparities and honour commitments to the UN Convention on Child Rights and Sustainable Development Goals.
Mitigate the Effects of Home Confinement on Children During the COVID-19 Outbreak

AUTHOR(S)
Guanghai Wang; Yunting Zhang

Institution: The Lancet
Published: March 2020   Journal: The Lancet
In response to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak, the Chinese Government has ordered a nationwide school closure as an emergency measure to prevent spreading of the infection. Public activities are discouraged. The Ministry of Education estimates that more than 220 million children and adolescents are confined to their homes; this includes 180 million primary and secondary students and 47 million preschool children). Thanks to the strong administrative system in China, the emergency home schooling plan has been rigorously implemented. Massive efforts are being made by schools and teachers at all levels to create online courses and deliver them through TV broadcasts and the internet in record time. The new virtual semester has just started in many parts of the country, and various courses are offered online in a well organised manner. These actions are helping to alleviate many parents' concerns about their children's educational attainment by ensuring that school learning is largely undisrupted.
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UNICEF Innocenti's Children and COVID-19 Library is a database collecting research from around the world on COVID-19 and its impacts on children and adolescents.

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COVID-19 & Children: Rapid Research Response

UNICEF Innocenti is mobilizing a rapid research response in line with UNICEF’s global response to the COVID-19 crisis. The initiatives we’ve begun will provide the broad range of evidence needed to inform our work to scale up rapid assessment, develop urgent mitigating strategies in programming and advocacy, and preparation of interventions to respond to the medium and longer-term consequences of the COVID-19 crisis. The research projects cover a rapid review of evidence, education analysis, and social and economic policies.