ArticleBMJ open2023
Societal volunteering and COVID-19 mortality in high-income countries: a cross-sectional study.
Article in BMJ open, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 1 paper.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
1 citing paper in PubMed, 2 citations in OpenAlex.
- "It's about creating a sense of we": exploring the role of civil society in intercultural communication during COVID-19 in Stockholm, Sweden.Frontiers in public health · 2026Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors at 2 institutions in 4 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
objectivesThis study aims to quantify the relationship between societal volunteering and the impact of COVID-19 in that society.
designCross-sectional study. SETTING, PARTICIPANTS AND OUTCOME MEASURE: Data on societal volunteering were collected for 32 high-income countries (international analysis) and 50 US states (US analysis). Using regression analysis, the ability of this variable to explain COVID-19 mortality was compared with other variables put forward in the public debate (eg, vaccination rate, obesity, age). COVID-19 mortality was measured as the number of deaths due to COVID-19 per million inhabitants, from January 2020 until January 2022.
resultsSocietal volunteering explains 43% (resp. 34%) of observed variation in COVID-19 mortality (R²) in the international (resp. US states) analysis. Compared with other variables, societal volunteering better explains the variation in COVID-19 mortality across countries and US states, with only the prevalence of smokers displaying a higher R² in the international analysis.
conclusionsCountries and states with more societal volunteering have been less impacted by COVID-19, even after accounting for differences in demographics, gross domestic product, healthcare investments and vaccination rates. Although this evidence is not causal, our findings suggest that factors beyond the public-private debate might impact the resilience of societies to a pandemic, with societal volunteering being one such factor.
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