Utz Johann Pape’s research while affiliated with University of Göttingen and other places

... For example, phone surveys conducted with approximately 13 000 Kenyan households revealed a sharp decline in access to education, with only 31% of children being engaged in learning activities in April 2021 compared to approximately 80% prior to the pandemic. 5 Although access to medicine is slowly increasing and food shortages are decreasing, households reported skipping at least one meal approximately three days per week. 6 The loss of income and malnourishment experienced by Kenyans in response to COVID-19 is likely to have a long-term impact. ...

Reference:

The Biopsychosocial Impact and Syndemic Effect of COVID-19 on Youth Living with HIV in Kenya

... While AI applications for complex analysis are not new, the embedding of modern analytical models and real-time coupling with multi-channel data or information pipelines has unlocked advanced capabilities of AI algorithms. One of such revolutionary capability is the monthly imputation of price data, which was developed for 25 countries (Andrée, 2021a;Andrée & Pape, 2023) and is now deployed by the World Bank to cover over 2,100 markets across 36 countries and monitor food prices, energy prices, and unofficial parallel market exchange rates. 1 The Real-Time-Prices (RTP) dataset is created through a resource-intensive Markov Chain Monte Carlo framework involving hundreds of thousands of models to address missing data points in underlying surveys gathered from country systems, the World Food Programme and the Food and Agriculture Organization. To ensure the rapid processing required for maintaining up-to-date outputs as new data arrives, the algorithm employs a swift tree-based approach known as Cubist. ...

Reference:

Comparative Analysis of AI-Predicted and Crowdsourced Food Prices in an Economically Volatile Region

... Empirical evidence on the scale and the nature of the impacts of the pandemic and its countermeasures, while growing, is quite limited, partly due to the lack of suitable, comparable, and timely micro-level data (Delius et al., 2020;Gourlay et al., 2021). This lack of data also stems from the way COVID-19 is transmitted person-to-person, which inhibits face-to-face survey data collection. ...

Reference:

Usefulness and misrepresentation of phone surveys on COVID-19 and food security in Africa

... Parents, caregivers, and children were particularly affected [4], as the pandemic disrupted daily routines and led to a home-centred situation [5]. With schools and daycare centres closed or operating at limited capacity, parents had to juggle their jobs and their children's education and care [6,7]. While studies underscored quality family time during lockdowns, increased stress and exhaustion [8] as well as negative impact on the mental health of caregivers has also been reported [9,10]. ...

Reference:

“Empathy for children is often missing”: a mixed methods analysis of a German forum on COVID-19 pandemic measures

... Conversely, girls tend to lean more toward seeking social support as a coping mechanism (Adasi et al., 2020;Sanchez-Céspedes et al., 2022). Another perspective on this is that boys are more inclined to employ problem-centered coping strategies, which focus on directly addressing the issue causing distress, while girls are more likely to opt for emotion-centered coping strategies, concentrating on regulating their emotional responses to the challenges they encounter (Lee & Mason, 2014;Senad, 2022;Xu et al., 2022). ...

Reference:

Unveiling Gender Differences in Adolescent Coping: Insights from High School Students in Jakarta

... of the world engage in small-scale entrepreneurship to adapt to limited employment opportunities and to make use of their existing skills and resources. This trend is observed among refugees in Kenya, where economic disruptions have prompted a shift from traditional employment to self-employment as a survival strategy during the COVID-19 pandemic (Vintar et. al, 2022). ...

Reference:

Understanding livelihood strategies and coping mechanisms adopted during COVID-19: A study on Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh

... Further, the integration of immunization with other health programs such as nutrition and health education were shown to be an effective strategy for improving vaccine access and uptake [27,31,36,41,48]. Also, clear vaccination policies and guidelines, and residence of the populations was identified to influence vaccine coverage as refugees and IDPs in camps were more likely to be vaccinated than those in host communities, in three studies [31,53,54]. Other factors that were least frequently reported include previous positive vaccination experiences of refugees and IDPs, individuals' education beyond primary level, and effective logistics strategy such as cross-docking, where vaccines are directly transferred to the target population to ensure vaccine availability and avoid storage constraints. ...

Reference:

Access to vaccination among refugees, asylum seekers and internally displaced persons in Sub-Saharan Africa: a systematic review

... Empirical evidence tends to disprove those concerns as minimal or overstated (Baird et al 2018;Handa et al 2018;Bastagli et al 2016;Ravallion 2016). Yet, skepticism should not be easily dismissed, and the risks of serious policy debates being infused with an excessive dose of advocacy, as opposed to a balanced interpretation of the evidence, are real and may detract from a genuine understanding of the pros and cons of cash (Baird et al 2022;Della Guardia et al 2022;Palacios, Crombrugghe, & Gassmann, 2022). This paper does not espouse cash transfers as an instrument for which global knowledge is conclusive and unilaterally positive; rather, while generally supportive and encouraging, factors like worldviews, information gaps, trade-offs and alternative interventions provide cautionary arguments to maintain an objective, open-minded and facts-based approach. ...

Reference:

Is the Magic Happening?: A Systematic Literature Review of the Economic Multiplier of Cash Transfers

... A lack of trust in political actors, both local and foreign, is another factor associated with vaccine hesitancy in SSA. A study analyzing data from the Kenya Rapid Response Phone Survey (RRPS) measured vaccine refusal and the associated factors, noting that distrust in the government's response to COVID-19 was a determiner [78]. Due to the political nature of the SARS-CoV-2 vaccine, the mandatory administration in some countries as well as the lack of trust in the pharmaceutical industry also influence vaccine acceptance, with some individuals even holding religious beliefs regarding the jab as a representation of the "mark of the beast" [79]. ...

Reference:

Vaccine inequity: a threat to Africa's recovery from COVID-19

... Additionally, insights were drawn from the Kenya COVID-19 Rapid Response Phone Surveys (RRPS), [9] conducted between 2020 and 2022, which included the Shona as a distinct stratum. The RRPS monitored the impact of the pandemic on vulnerable groups, capturing critical data on employment disruptions, income losses, and food insecurity during the crisis. ...

Reference:

Policy Brief: From Stateless to Citizens: the journey of the Shona community in Kenya