Skip to main content

COVID19

Going the Last Mile (with Evidence)

A study by Yale’s Mushfiq Mobarak and his colleagues found that nurses on motorbikes with vaccine-stocked coolers could help increase vaccination rates in rural Sierra Leone, showing that it is possible to get health interventions to the most remote and under-resourced areas cost-effectively, in ways that help ensure that the interventions are taken up and used.

A motorcycle carrying vaccine supplies along a dirt road
  • Did COVID-19 Restrictions on Restaurants and Bars Save Lives?

    COVID-19 restrictions on restaurants, bars, gyms and salons were among the most controversial and the last to be lifted. A new study looks at whether closures, capacity restrictions, and other limits on these businesses actually lowered the death rate.

    Blooms Tavern in New York City in May 2021. Photo: Nina Westervelt/Bloomberg via Getty Images.
  • Video: Identifying with a Team Helps Prevent Stress and Burnout among Healthcare Workers

    A Yale study conducted in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic found that feeling like part of a team reduced reported stress and burnout—an insight with implications for how any kind of organization can weather a crisis.

    A group of healthcare workers preparing for surgery
  • Study in Bangladesh Identifies Keys to Encouraging Mask-Wearing

    A team of researchers, including Yale SOM’s Jason Abaluck and Mushfiq Mobarak, tested multiple methods for encouraging use of masks in Bangladesh and identified a group of simple interventions that tripled usage.

    A shopkeeper in Bangladesh wearing a mask provided as part of the study 
  • How Nudges Could Boost Vaccination Rates

    A study co-authored by Yale SOM’s James Choi tested a variety of text messages to prompt people to get flu vaccines, offering one potential tool to encourage those who aren’t rushing to get a COVID shot.

    A woman looking at her phone while walking
  • To Extend Vaccines’ Reach, Distribute Them through Dollar Stores

    A new Yale study says that a partnership with the Dollar General retail chain, which is being considered by the CDC, could bring vaccination sites substantially closer to low-income, Black, and Hispanic households in many parts of the United States.

    A Dollar General Store in Selma, Alabama. Photo: Barry Lewis/InPictures via Getty Images.
  • To Convince the Vaccine Hesitant, Understand Their Underlying Motivations

    What will change the minds of those reluctant to get the COVID-19 vaccine? Yale SOM’s Vineet Kumar and two Yale doctors used the tools of consumer marketing to survey hesitant healthcare workers and analyze their responses.

    An illustration of a puzzle in the shape of a head and a syringe
  • How Connecticut Accelerated Its Vaccinations

    Josh Geballe ’02, Connecticut’s chief operating officer, explains the state’s controversial decision to switch to age-based eligibility for COVID vaccines—and says it likely saved lives.

    A drawing of a woman taking a selfie while getting a vaccination.
  • How COVID Has Worsened the Opioid Epidemic

    There is another epidemic we cannot lose sight of: the opioid epidemic, which has become only more acute in the United States and elsewhere amidst the disruptions and stress caused by COVID-19.

    Family members of people who died after taking fentanyl pills at a press conference in Los Angeles in February 2021. Photo: Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty Images.
  • How COVID-19 Is Making Gender Inequality Worse in Low-Income Countries—and What to Do About It

    Gender disparities in social and economic outcomes, already larger in the developing world than in rich countries, have been exacerbated by the pandemic. Policy action is badly needed to address the compounding of existing inequalities and protect the most vulnerable women.

    A Doctors Without Borders healthcare provider with a mother and her child at a mobile clinic in Sierra Leone in July 2020. Photo: Saidu Bah/AFP via Getty Images.
  • The Vaccines Bring Hope—and New Questions

    A year into the COVID-19 pandemic, vaccines are a reality—and now we face the logistical and medical complications of inoculating a vast population while infection rages and the virus mutates. We asked Yale SOM’s Dr. Howard Forman, a public authority on the pandemic, for an update.

    A woman getting a vaccination