Socioeconomic risk groups, vaccination and pandemic influenza

A new influenza pandemic was on the World Health Organization's list of the ten most serious threats to global health in both 2018 and 2019. This is because pandemics cause large numbers of cases of illness, hospitalizations and deaths. In addition, pandemics and serious epidemics can have major economic consequences for both society and the individual, through, for example, the burden on the healthcare system and unemployment associated with the closure of society. The disease and response burdens during COVID-19 have made clear these negative consequences of a pandemic. The core idea of ​​the project "Socio-economic risk groups, vaccination and pandemic influenza" (PANRISK) is that influenza can not only be understood as a medical problem, but that the disease's epidemiology and consequences are also governed by social conditions, which in turn can influence who gets sick , who dies and who survives. PANRISK has therefore surveyed the socio-economic background of the risk groups for serious influenza illness, particularly those with chronic illnesses. We have documented that people with a short education and low connection to the labor market (including people with a disability pension) have a higher risk of belonging to a medical risk group for serious illness. We have also investigated how social inequality in education and income can lead to social inequality in flu vaccination. Our findings suggest that free influenza vaccine increases coverage and reduces social inequality in vaccine uptake. In a systematic literature review and meta-analysis, we show that groups with the lowest socioeconomic status had a 1.4 times higher risk of serious illness during the Spanish flu in 1918 and swine flu in 2009 compared to groups with the highest socioeconomic status. How social inequality in morbidity and mortality from influenza can be reduced is neither sufficiently taken into account in current vaccination policy, nor discussed in international and national emergency plans. The PANRISK project has therefore written several articles on how public health authorities can increase vaccination coverage and support for non-pharmaceutical measures among medical risk groups and socially vulnerable groups in society, thereby reducing social inequality in vulnerability during the COVID-19 pandemic, future flu seasons and influenza pandemics. The project is led by the Center for Research on Pandemics & Society (PANSOC) and the Labor Research Institute (AFI) at OsloMet - the metropolitan university. In addition to researchers from AFI, researchers from the Institute of Public Health, Umeå University and the Philadelphia Department of Public Health participate.