key: cord-0802389-mjje8ars
authors: Oronce, Carlos I.; Tsugawa, Yusuke
title: Bonding and linking social capital are key determinants for successful pandemic policy
date: 2021-09-10
journal: Soc Sci Med
DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2021.114376
sha: 8001e697b38a86ba176a51be58af08bdd355b75e
doc_id: 802389
cord_uid: mjje8ars

nan

In the United States, the response to the COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated the fracturing and divisiveness of public discourse. What were originally deemed uncontroversial non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs), such as mask-wearing, have become symbols of political and cultural identity. Many NPIs, including mask-wearing and social distancing, required communities to come together and act collaboratively. However, studies have demonstrated that the ability of communities to coordinate NPIs may vary substantially between regions. One of the potential determinants of whether communities could cooperate in the face of monumental challenges, such as the COVID-19 pandemic and its rippling economic and social effects, is social capital, defined as the resources to which individuals have access through their social networks and facilitated by shared values or norms (Moore & Kawachi, 2017) . The idea of social capital in mitigating the social, emotional, and health effects of natural disasters has been well-documented (Castleden et al., 2011; Koh & Cadigan, 2008; Noel et al., 2018) , and there is emerging evidence that this has been true for the COVID-19 pandemic as well. For example, prior work from Europe has shown that countries with greater social capital had lower excess deaths and decreased mobility which lends support to the idea that social capital facilitates collective action towards health behaviors that curb the spread of the COVID-19 (Bartscher et al., 2020) . Social capital, however, is a complex construct, and therefore, may have intricate interplays with how individuals respond to emergencies such as the COVID-19 pandemic.

In this issue of Social Science and Medicine, Fraser and colleagues investigated the relationship between the three subtypes of social capital (bonding, linking, and bridging) and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, as measured by excess mortality using county-level data in the US. They found that regions with a high bonding social capital experienced lower excess mortality, while the relationship for linking capital and excess mortality was weaker. They found no evidence of the impact of bridging social capital (Fraser et al., 2021) . randomized trial of physician-delivered information found that racial concordance between participants and physicians increased information-seeking behavior among Black study participants (Alsan et al., 2021) . Instead of spending resources on financial incentives or rewards, media messages featuring everyday community members rather than celebrities or high-profile individuals may be more effective in communities with high bonding social capital that are also at risk of excess mortality during the current surge.

Second, the finding that linking social capital was temporarily associated with reduced excess mortality early in the pandemic suggests that the impact of linking social capital may be nuanced. Outside of the COVID-19 context, high social capital enhances the relationship between healthy behaviors and the collaborations of local health departments and health care systems (Cramer et al., 2021) . At the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic, trust in governmental and public institutions was high, and public health officials, such as Dr. Anthony Fauci, were highly regarded. High trust in governmental institutions and linking social capital may have aided public health and health care messages on risk mitigation, thereby improving adherence to J o u r n a l P r e -p r o o f

NPIs. During the current phase, which has focused on vaccine uptake, trust in government is crucial for public health as prior work has demonstrated its association with vaccine acceptance (Moucheraud et al., 2021) .

Given the importance of linking social capital and public health, one explanation for the finding in the study by Fraser et al. is the role of misinformation. Since last year, there has been increasing antagonism towards public officials and proliferating misinformation regarding the effectiveness of masking, social distancing, and other NPIs, in addition to the effectiveness and safety of the COVID-19 vaccine. The spread of misinformation has been deemed a public health problem by the Surgeon General and has potentially undermined trust in non-partisan governmental leadership, which may explain why the relationship between linking social capital and excess mortality was not durable (Murthy, 2021). Specifically, even in communities where linking social capital is high, misinformation may have already sowed enough doubt to undermine population-level confidence in NPIs and generate hesitance towards vaccination.

The potential impact cannot be understated and will contribute to tragically preventable excess mortality.

What can be done to counter this and potentially strengthen the inverse relationship between linking social capital and excess mortality? As the Surgeon General's report notes, addressing misinformation is a multilevel problem requiring action across individuals, communities, governments, educational institutions, and researchers. In particular, governments may need to experiment with improved messaging tools in partnership with local communities, thereby leveraging bonding social capital. Additionally, researchers can support such efforts by studying interventions to combat misinformation but also investigating the underlying mechanisms of how misinformation interacts with social capital subtypes and affects the response to the COVID-19 pandemic (Murthy, 2021) .

Comparison of Knowledge and Information-Seeking Behavior After General COVID-19 Public Health Messages and Messages Tailored for Black and Latinx Communities

Social Capital and the Spread of Covid-19: Insights from European Countries

Resilience thinking in health protection

Evidence that collaborative action between local health departments and nonprofit hospitals helps foster healthy behaviors in communities: A multilevel study

Bowling alone or distancing together? The role of social capital in excess death rates from COVID-19