As we entered the third year of the global COVID-19 pandemic, 2022 was set to be another year of discourse about the social and political dimensions of health and humanitarian crises. The research and engagement we conducted through the Social Science in Humanitarian Action Platform (SSHAP), as well as the evidence-on-demand requests we received, definitely proved this to be true.

 

A variety of other health and humanitarian crises also came to the fore as the year progressed, which we at SSHAP responded to in various ways. Throughout the monkeypox outbreak, we supported the World Health Organisation (WHO) and others working in the field with a set of briefings, and contributed to a WHO social science technical working group roundtable ahead of a meeting of the WHO R&D Roadmap. As well as providing rapid support and evidence for other crises such as the war in Ukraine, famine in the Horn of Africa, and the recent outbreak of the Sudan strain of Ebola in Uganda, we also achieved positive milestones as a programme, including:

  • Our funding was renewed for another two years, which will enable us to continue and expand our work on embedding social science in humanitarian and health responses.
  • We received two awards, the 2022 ARHE Policy Brief Award for a briefing on COVID-19 vaccine mistrust, and our Co-Investigator, Juliet Bedford, received the Marsh Award for Anthropology in the World.
  • Two cohorts of social scientists and humanitarian practitioners successfully completed the SSHAP fellowship, one of which was our first Francophone fellowship.
  • Progress was made towards launching two regional hubs, which has involved collaborating with local partners. Our Central and East Africa Regional Hub will be launching in early January 2023.
  • We launched the SSHAP Forum, an email group for our Network where social scientists and humanitarian actors can interact and share their questions, experiences, and challenges from contexts across the globe.
  • 27 outputs were published throughout the year, and we received over 61,000 downloads of our resources on OpenDocs in 2022.

 

Looking towards 2023, we will build on our strategy to better integrate social science into humanitarian and health responses, regardless of which new or unprecedented emergencies occur. We also look forward to the many activities and engagements we have planned, including the launch of our first Arabic fellowship, a new call for Social Science in Action workshops, and the launch of our Central and East Africa Regional Hub. We look forward to continuing to work with our funders, partners, and network to co-create social science approaches that are relevant to the challenges of our unprecedented times.