Tag Archives: South Africa

New Grant Awarded: Strengthening Contextualised Evidence Use in Public Health

Posted on by
Reply

We are thrilled to announce that the Centre for Philosophy of Epidemiology, Medicine and Public Health (CPEMPH) has been awarded a prestigious British Academy grant under the Evidence-Informed Policymaking Programme, funded by the UK’s International Science Partnerships Fund.

The project, “Integrating Evidence for Contextualised Public Health Policy: Lessons from South Africa”, will run from April 2025 to March 2026. Led by Professor Alex Broadbent, Nancy Cartwright, Herkulaas Combrink, Benjamin Smart, and Sarah Wieten, the project is a partnership between CPEMPH at Durham and UJ, Durham University’s CHESS, and the University of the Free State. The project aims to improve the integration of two increasingly important types of evidence in public health policymaking:

  • Model-based projections, which forecast intervention outcomes.
  • Social listening reports, which track public sentiment and identify misinformation.

Using the South African COVID-19 response as a focal case, the project will test and refine the Evidence Mapping Framework (developed by Cartwright, Munro and Kelters) to assess how these evidence types can be better contextualised and used to support effective policy design, implementation, and evaluation.

The research responds to key challenges identified during the pandemic—particularly the difficulties in combining technical modelling outputs with real-time information about community attitudes, needs, and values. By developing practical tools and refining existing methodologies, the project aims to offer transferable lessons for other countries and contexts grappling with similar challenges.

What This Means for CPEMPH

This award supports our mission to advance philosophical engagement with real-world challenges in public health, evidence use, and justice. It reinforces our role as a key international player in the field of evidence-based policy and showcases our ongoing commitment to equitable collaboration—especially through our strong partnerships with South African institutions.

What Comes Next?

Over the coming year, the project will deliver:

  • Case study analyses of modelling and social listening in South Africa
  • An extended Evidence Mapping Framework adapted to diverse evidence types
  • Policy briefs and practical guidance for public health stakeholders
  • A hybrid workshop in late 2025 bringing together researchers, policymakers, and practitioners to test and refine the tools developed

Stay tuned for updates, workshop invitations, and outputs. We’re excited to contribute to better public health policymaking—not only in South Africa, but globally.

For more information please get in touch

Negligent Racism in COVID-19 Lockdowns

Posted on by
Reply

We are pleased to announce the publication of a new article by CPEMPH members Alex Broadbent (Durham University) and Pieter Streicher (University of Johannesburg), titled “Was Lockdown Racist?”, in Ergo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy.

In this paper, the authors introduce the concept of negligent racism—a form of racism that does not require intent but arises when policy choices foreseeably cause disproportionate harm to certain racial groups, and alternatives are available but ignored.

Focusing on the impact of COVID-19 lockdowns in sub-Saharan Africa, the article argues that these measures, regardless of intention, were ill-suited to the region’s socio-economic realities. The authors contend that the adoption of lockdown policies, modeled after responses in wealthier nations, led to significant harm in African contexts, where factors such as overcrowded housing, reliance on informal economies, and limited access to essential services made strict lockdowns particularly detrimental.

The paper challenges the notion that the adverse effects of lockdowns were merely consequences of existing inequalities. Instead, it posits that the global implementation of such policies, without adequate consideration of their suitability for diverse contexts, exemplifies negligent racism.

This publication contributes to ongoing discussions about equity in global health policymaking and underscores the importance of context-sensitive approaches.

📄 Read the full article here

Or listen to an AI-generated podcast about the article here…

Methodological Pluralism in Epidemiology: Lessons from Covid-19

Posted on by
Reply

We are pleased to share a commentary published in Global Epidemiology by CPEMPH members Pieter Streicher and Alex Broadbent, with co-author Joel Hellewell (EMBL-EBI), titled “The need for methodological pluralism in epidemiological modelling.”

This paper examines two high-profile failures in Covid-19 forecasting by the UK’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE), during the Delta and Omicron waves of 2021. In both instances, projections proved not only inaccurate but too vague to be practically useful—hospitalisations were overestimated by an order of magnitude, and deaths by even more.

The authors argue that a key contributor to these failures was SAGE’s reliance on a single modelling approach: mechanistic simulation. By contrast, the South African Covid-19 Modelling Consortium adopted a pluralistic strategy—combining mechanistic and descriptive methods, learning iteratively from outcomes, and achieving far greater predictive accuracy despite far fewer resources.

The commentary makes a strong case for adopting methodological pluralism in epidemic modelling, highlighting the value of multiple, complementary perspectives when dealing with uncertainty in high-stakes contexts. The paper calls for diverse methodological inputs, critical evaluation of past performance, and more open-minded engagement with data from a variety of global contexts.

📄 Read the full article here

Was lockdown racist? Lecture in Princeton Center for Human Values, Boston SPH

Posted on by
Reply

Delighted to be giving a talk called “Was lockdown racist?” at the Princeton Centre for Human Values (2 Nov) and the Boston School of Public Health’s Department of Global Health (7 Nov).

Princeton: 2 Nov @ 4.30pm, Center for Human Values

Boston SPH: 7 Nov @ 1pm, Dept of Global Health

Abstract

In 2016, South African learner Zulaikha Patel argued that a school rule requiring hair to be neat was racist, despite applying equally to pupils of all races. This paper argues that suppression strategies deployed against Covid-19, especially in the early stages of the pandemic, were racist in the same way. The suppression strategy was motivated by science done in traditional seats of colonial power. Local factors shaped (as they normally do) both the methods used and the recommendations arrived at. These did not adequately consider the situation of many people globally living in various contexts of poverty: including on those in Africa. Notwithstanding, the recommendations were promulgated by the World Health Organisation and others, with no regard for local context. Feasibility of implementing “lockdowns” in breadline conditions, effectiveness in overcrowded conditions, local priorities, and the age of the population (in Africa, median 19.7) were not contemplated. Local political and financial interests were aligned with this neglect, and local scientific capacity was in any case lacking. When a regulatory package is implemented in an African country with high costs and low benefits, and originates in a strategy conceived in Europe and promulgated by European-based international organisations, it is impossible to ignore racial dynamics. I show that the trope of “lockdown” as enacted for Covid is a central difference between the responses to Covid and other epidemics in Africa, and I show that one cannot adequately explain this contrast without reference to race. Therefore lockdown was racist.

‘Can you lock down in a slum?’ published in Global Epidemiology

Posted on by
1

Delighted that this paper co-authored with Pieter Streicher has now been published in Global Epidemiology.

Broadbent A, Streicher P. Can you lock down in a slum? And who would benefit if you tried? Difficult questions about epidemiology’s commitment to global health inequalities during Covid-19. Global Epidemiology. 2022;4:100074. doi:10.1016/J.GLOEPI.2022.100074 (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2590113322000049)

Is lockdown right? Bioethics, global health, and COVID-19

Posted on by
Reply

I gave a public lecture at Virginia Commonwealth University, and it’s up on YouTube here. Bear in mind it was midnight my time… surreal but enjoyable experience.

In this talk I argue for these five claims:

  1. Several common arguments for lockdowns fail
  2. Many actual lockdowns have been unjustified and wrong: other measures would have been better
  3. Globally, lockdowns shift the burden of disease from the powerful and wealthy to the less powerful and poor
  4. The global preference for lockdowns is due to their favoring the interests of the rich and powerful
  5. Optional extra: the favoring of lockdowns by the “left” and rejection by the “right” has nothing to do with their intrinsic character: they are as much right as left and vice versa

How Should We Evaluate Lockdowns? Disentangling Effectiveness, Context, and Politics

Posted on by
1

Very pleased to share a new blog post I’ve written with Herkulaas Combrink, Benjamin Smart and Damian Walker for the Center for Global Development’s commentary and analysis section.

https://www.cgdev.org/blog/how-should-we-evaluate-lockdowns-disentangling-effectiveness-context-and-politics

Interview – why lockdowns didn’t work in South Africa – Radio 702 https://omny.fm/shows/early-breakfast-with-abongile-nzelenzele/why-lockdown-didnt-work

Posted on by
Reply

https://omny.fm/shows/early-breakfast-with-abongile-nzelenzele/why-lockdown-didnt-work

Commenting on a recent piece in The Conversation, related to a paper published in Global Epidemiology recently, indicating no obvious effect of lockdown over and above mitigation in South Africa.

Lockdown didn’t work in South Africa https://theconversation.com/lockdown-didnt-work-in-south-africa-why-it-shouldnt-happen-again-147682https://theconversation.com/lockdown-didnt-work-in-south-africa-why-it-shouldnt-happen-again-147682

Posted on by
1

Latest from our ongoing research project at the Institute for the Future of Knowledge with the Center for Global Development. We are looking at indirect health effects of lockdown, meaning the effects on things other than COVID-19. But in the process, we couldn’t help but notice the direct effects too – or rather, their absence…

https://theconversation.com/lockdown-didnt-work-in-south-africa-why-it-shouldnt-happen-again-147682

Paper just out in Global Epidemiology: COVID-19 in South Africa https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloepi.2020.100034 #epitwitter @CGDev @besmart

Posted on by
Reply

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2590113320300183

With Herkulaas Combrink and Benjamin Smart.

Part of a project at the Institute for the Future of Knowledge funded by the Center for Global Development. The project looks at the indirect health effects of lockdown in multiple countries.