ArticleDisasters2021
'Let communities do their work': the role of mutual aid and self-help groups in the Covid-19 pandemic response.
Article in Disasters, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 16 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
16 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Exploring Grassroots Indicators for Pandemic Prevention, Preparedness, and Response: A Systematic Narrative Review.International journal of health policy and management · 2025Pooled it
- Pandemic-Related Funding Termination and Structural Drivers of Inequities: A Case Study of aAmerican journal of public health · 2025Article
- Structural drivers of health among transgender women in the United States: A nationwide study.Health & place · 2025Article
- The Application of Artificial Intelligence in Acute Prescribing in Homeopathy: A Comparative Retrospective Study.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Suicide-Related Mortality Trends in Europe, 2012-2021.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2025Article
- Article
- Humanitarian observatories: insights for reforming humanitarianism from below.Journal of international humanitarian action · 2025Article
- Exploring mutual aid-based community engagement during the COVID-19 pandemic: a case study of community group buying in China.Frontiers in public health · 2025Article
- Mutual aid food sharing during the COVID-19 pandemic: case study of Tompkins County, NY.Public health nutrition · 2024Article
- Governance and Public Health Decision-Making During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Scoping Review.Public health reviews · 2024Article
- Coping mechanisms during the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown in metropolitan Johannesburg, South Africa: A qualitative study.American journal of human biology : the official journal of the Human Biology Council · 2023Article
- African governments must build on covid-19 responses to advance gender equality.BMJ (Clinical research ed.) · 2023Article
- Vulnerability in context; hard numbers, tricky words and grey areas for gerontology.Journal of aging studies · 2023Article
- Mutual Aid Praxis Aligns Principles and Practice in Grassroots COVID-19 Responses Across the US.Kennedy Institute of Ethics journal · 2023Article
- Solidarity, not charity: Learning the lessons of the COVID-19 pandemic to reconceptualise the radicality of mutual aid.Transactions (Institute of British Geographers : 1965) · 2022Article
- Prioritising well-being and resilience to 'build back better': insights from a Dominican small-scale fishing community.Disasters · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
How to respond quickly, effectively, and sensitively to large-scale crises is debated at length in the aid sector. Institutional focuses on projects and outcomes have led to abundant literature on the efficacy of external interventions, while the actions of individuals and communities to meet their own needs remain under researched. This paper seeks to close the gap by joining global trends and specific case studies to explore the scale, breadth, and characteristics of citizen and community-led responses to the Covid-19 pandemic of 2020-21. Using mixed methods, it argues that mutual aid, self-help, and other spontaneous community measures were vital to the early response to Covid-19 globally. Such endeavours have limitations, however, which can be strengthened with the right national and international support. The paper concludes by calling on authorities and aid actors to widen their understanding of 'first response' and provide meaning ful support to mutual aid and local self-help initiatives now and in the future.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.