Sexual-identity disparities in substance use among U.S. veterans, and whether mental-health treatment mitigates risk for those with depression, remain under-examined. Using data on veterans from the 2021–2023 National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH; N = 7,212), disparities were estimated in past-30-day nicotine, marijuana, binge drinking, and polysubstance use, as well as severe psychological distress (K6≥13) and past-year suicidal ideation. Guided by a biosocial/minority-stress framework, multiple imputation was applied (m = 20) and survey-weighted logistic regression adjusting for age, year, race/ethnicity, sex, education, metro status, insurance, marital status, employment, and income; among veterans with a past-year major depressive episode (MDE), interactions were tested between sexual identity and (a) depression-related clinical contact (DRC) and (b) prescription medication for depressive feelings. Bisexual veterans showed the highest prevalence of marijuana (33.5%) and polysubstance use (30.6%), exceeding that of heterosexual (11.8%, 14.9%) and gay/lesbian veterans (24.0%, 18.8%). Models restricted to veterans with MDE, past-year DRC (DRC defined as any visit or conversation with a health professional about depressive feelings) moderated risk for gay/lesbian veterans, with DRC associated with lower odds of binge drinking and polysubstance use; prescription medication showed a similar moderating pattern for nicotine and polysubstance outcomes. Findings for severe psychological distress and suicidal ideation were mixed and consistent with confounding by indication. Results should be interpreted cautiously given the cross-sectional data, self-report, small sexual-minority subgroups, and non-aligned recall windows (past-year mental health/treatment vs past-30-day substance use). Overall, sexual-identity disparities in substance use are evident, with bisexual veterans bearing the greatest burden, and engagement in DRC and medication among veterans with MDE, particularly gay/lesbian veterans, showing associations consistent with a buffering effect of affirming care. Longitudinal and qualitative studies are needed to test causal pathways and to illuminate lived experiences, and policy/clinical efforts should expand culturally competent, integrated services and routine SOGI data collection to monitor and reduce inequities.

The deliberations for the Pandemic Accord have opened an important moment of reflection on future approaches to pandemic preparedness. The concept had been increasingly prominent in global health discourse for several years before the pandemic and had concretised into a set of standardised mainstream approaches to the prediction of threats. Since 2019, the authors and the wider research team have led a research project on the meanings and practices of preparedness. At its close, the authors undertook 25 interviews to capture reflections of regional and global health actors’ ideas about preparedness, and how and to what extent these were influenced by Covid-19. Here, an analysis of interview responses is presented, with attention to (dis)connections between the views of those occupying positions in regional and global institutions. The interviews revealed that preparedness means different things to different people and institutions. Analysis revealed several domains of preparedness with distinct conceptualisations of what preparedness is, its purposes, and scope. Overall, there appear to be some changes in thinking due to Covid-19, but also strong continuities, especially with respect to a technical focus and an underplaying of the inequities that became evident (in terms of biosocial vulnerabilities but also global-regional disparities) and, related to this, the importance of power and politics. Here, the analysis has revealed three elements, cutting across the domains but particularly strong within the dominant framing of preparedness, which act to sideline direct engagement with power and politics in the meanings and practices of preparedness. These are an emphasis on urgent action, a focus on universal or standardised approaches, and a resort to technical interventions as solutions. A rethinking of pandemic preparedness needs to enable better interconnections across scales and attention to financing that enables more equitable partnerships between states and regions. Such transformation in established hierarchies will require explicit attention to power dynamics and the political nature of preparedness.

Biosocial birth cohort studies are uniquely positioned to be novel sites of interdisciplinary research. Their enduring commitment to specific field sites and populations, recurring grant renewal cycles, ability to ask prospective questions while drawing on long-standing data repositories, and more ensure ongoing collaboration and allow research to remain responsive to the evolving needs and timelines of multiple disciplines. However, it is widely recognised that interdisciplinary work is often easier imagined than achieved, and additional conditions are required to facilitate it beyond assembling teams of varied experts. This piece offers mediating practices as a concept that refers to the practical, multi-directional, and relational processes that attempt to resolve tensions that interdisciplinary teams often confront. Mediating practices bridge gaps among different disciplines’ data and methods, often relying on pragmatic strategies, like re-designing data infrastructures or planning action items after a meeting, to do so. As such, mediating practices are crucial to conducting successful interdisciplinary research. Further, the concept of mediating practices foregrounds the actions of junior team members who often perform these practices, highlighting the need to foster epistemic humility and models of horizontal knowledge production in interdisciplinary teams. Here, the authors discuss their experiences and insights as members of interdisciplinary projects and outline how mediating practices emerged in these projects and enabled interdisciplinary success.

This ethnographic study, conducted as part of the Pandemic Preparedness Project, explores the pandemic preparedness of communities in NG and its satellite settlements within Kailahun District, Eastern Province, Sierra Leone. The research site was particularly significant due to its history as one of the hardest-hit areas during the 2014–16 Ebola outbreak. NG is served by a Peripheral Health Unit (PHU) that provides health services to seven villages, as well as one distant village far from its designated facility. The study employed long-term observational research methods, where the researcher lived within the community, becoming an integrated observer familiar with local customs and daily life. This ethnographic approach aimed to understand the health-seeking behaviors of residents following the Ebola crisis. The onset of the Covid-19 pandemic during the study period shifted the focus to examine how the community understood and responded to a new pandemic threat. Additionally, the study reflects on the challenges faced by female social scientists in Sierra Leone, where few are trained in ethnographic methods. This article offers insights into the process of conducting ethnographic research in a challenging context, providing valuable guidance for other female researchers seeking to engage in similar bio-social studies.

Air pollution exposure and its health effects are a central concern of environmental epigenetic research with birth cohorts. This article explores why researchers have turned to the placenta as a research object to study the dynamic interactions between in utero exposure to air pollution and future child health. Drawing on Science and Technology Studies, particularly the bio-object concept, this article analyses the transformation of the placenta into a technologically manipulated postgenomic bio-object through scientific discourse and practice. Building on ethnographic fieldwork conducted at an institute of epidemiology and public health in Spain, we analyse how researchers deal with the tension between the placenta’s promises for epigenetic research and the practical research realities in postgenomic sciences. First, researchers discursively call upon the placenta as a suitable research object that embodies air pollution exposure and becomes entangled with and responds to this exposure via epigenetic changes. Studying the placenta promises to elucidate the temporally dynamic and environmentally embedded process of disease development as one of postgenomics’ core epistemic concerns. Second, in practice, however, accessing and preparing the postpartum placenta for epigenetic analysis defies its promise as a postgenomic bio-object. The constraints of research with birth cohorts, such as only having access to the postpartum placenta at birth, limit what researchers can know about the dynamic process of disease development. Third, we show how researchers deal with these limitations by assembling additional data in and around this organ to recontextualise the epigenetic analysis performed in the postpartum placenta and revive its postgenomic character. We conclude by discussing how ethnographies of epistemic practices provide entry points to collaboratively reflect upon the theoretical and methodological opportunities and challenges in birth cohort research to study biosocial dynamics. We suggest avenues for using qualitative social science perspectives for future biosocial research and collaboration between the social and life sciences.

Longitudinal birth cohort research provides a glimpse into the biological and social trajectories of a cohort of people, which helps us to better understand how to improve health and social outcomes. While qualitative longitudinal, ethnographic, and other qualitative research methods are increasingly used to capture complex data in trials and cohort research, they are relatively less common, and they vary greatly within and across cohorts and national contexts. The aim of this scoping review is to provide an overview of the use of qualitative and innovative methods in longitudinal preconception and birth cohort studies. Innovative methods, defined by Mannell and Davis (2019), go beyond standard surveys, interviews, and focus groups. The review summarises the literature of the integration of qualitative methods into birth cohort methodologies. Five databases were searched systematically, using MeSH and free text terms, for articles published in English before October 2022. Two-thirds of titles, abstracts, and full-text papers were screened by independent reviewers. Data extraction followed the Centre for Reviews and Dissemination guidelines and was based on features of qualitative methods from the COREQ checklist. 43 papers were included from the 13909 papers identified from the database search. The majority of the birth cohort studies used ‘traditional qualitative methods’ such as focus groups and one-to-one interviews. The studies that used ‘innovative qualitative methods’ included participatory interviews with photovoice, photographs, and using scenario and story cards, and while not a steadfast requirement of innovation, often included coproduction between the researchers and the participants. Although the literature reports challenges in conducting innovative methods within birth studies such as time and power imbalances between researcher and participant, these methods can help us better understand how to improve social and health outcomes.

Birth cohort studies provide invaluable data on topics across the lifecourse, including health, education, socioeconomic conditions, and well-being. As a result, they are an important resource for biosocial researchers to answer numerous complex research questions. However, despite being positioned as representative of their national or regional context, cohort studies often fail to capture the experience of marginalised groups.

One such group is sexual and gender minority (or LGBTQ+) people who, until very recently, have been largely invisible in birth cohorts. This is despite huge social and attitudinal changes in the last fifty years and clear evidence of the social, political, economic, and health and well-being disparities experienced compared to heterosexual cisgender people. However, due to small numbers, opportunities for quantitative analysis are limited and result in the neglect of LGBTQ+ data even when it is captured.

This article presents a brief overview of how queer lives have (and have not) been captured by standard data collection and analysis techniques in the British birth cohort studies. Then, using a cohort born in 1970, the authors explore the possibilities of person-centred mixed-method pen portraits to improve understanding of this group’s life trajectories.

In recent years, there have been increasing calls for the development and growth of the biosocial as a paradigm through which to tackle complex problems. The use of birth cohorts, mixed methods frameworks, and interdisciplinary work are common in biosocial research. However, these practices are also theoretically and practically complex due to epistemic, methodological, and academic challenges – particularly for early career researchers (ECRs) who face time constraints, funding limitations, and disciplinary expectations.

This paper draws on lessons from the experiences of ECRs in biosocial research by reflecting on theoretical heterogeneity, the necessity of translation and negotiation across disciplines and methodologies, and the practicalities of funding, collaboration, and dissemination. Throughout, the paper discusses strategies to overcome common challenges and provide suggestions for fellow ECRs and those interested in biosocial ECR training and development. The paper highlights the importance of strong networks with senior biosocial researchers and peers, the value of practical support, and the importance of formal and informal learning opportunities. The authors call for the enthusiasm for biosocial research to be matched with investment in the development and support for ECRs.

This paper compares community responses to Ebola and Covid-19 in two regions of southern and eastern Sierra Leone with reference to the theory of institutional dynamics proposed by the anthropologist Mary Douglas. Institutions, Douglas argued, are conveyed by styles of thought, shaped by the ways human communities, through everyday practices, reinforce systems of classification and denotation. Pandemic advice to ‘follow the science’ proved problematic, since there is no single institution of science, and institutions never stand alone but are bundled with other institutions, reflecting the manifold and intertwined practices of human social life. The paper explores some of the ways a traumatic epidemic of Ebola Virus Disease in Sierra Leone shaped a distinctive local response to this deadly infectious disease in the absence of an effective vaccine. This local approach emphasised social rules based on ideas about sequestration and testing. Communities then proposed to continue this rules-based approach to the pandemic of Covid-19 and showed little initial enthusiasm for vaccination. With Ebola, the adoption of rules resulted in dramatic drops in infection rates. But Covid-19 spreads in different ways, and good results from the application of social rules were much less apparent. The paper shows how communities began to grapple with this new situation. In some cases, vaccine hesitation was overcome by treating the requirement for vaccination as a new form of social discipline. More generally, it is concluded that epidemiologists need to pay specific attention to institutions and institutional dynamics in order to better understand and anticipate public reactions to new disease threats.

Vaccination is one of the most recognised strategies in public health for preventing the spread of epidemics, and the availability of a vaccine is often expected by health actors to be a ‘game-changer’. However, the COVID-19 (coronavirus disease 2019) vaccine in Senegal was not the magic bullet that the international community expected. A very low vaccination coverage rate (less than 10% by April 2023) was observed in this country, once considered a model in West Africa for its epidemic response. Beyond the population’s alleged hesitancy to be vaccinated, was a lack of preparedness to blame? Previous analyses show that outbreak preparation limited to standard interventions is not sufficient in the face of the social, cultural, and political configurations of each epidemic context and that uncertainty limits response capacity. This paper examines the social life of the COVID-19 vaccine to identify the forms and contextual dimensions of uncertainty related to immunisation in Senegal. The authors explore how vaccination was implemented and compare experiences with the preparedness process, to offer insight on uncertainties. Using Stirling’s theoretical model that defines various expressions of incertitude, the authors identify four nexuses at various stages of the social life of COVID-19 vaccine in Senegal: (1) material uncertainty related to vaccine availability, (2) ambiguity of the population about the purpose of vaccination and the risks of the disease, (3) uncertainty related to side effects, and (4) uncertainty about vaccination strategies shared by scientific and health authorities. These uncertainties were only partly considered in the preparedness process, for they are related to systemic structural dimensions and reflect the impact of global/regional powers on the local level. The findings of this research are relevant not only to support better communication around vaccines in Senegal but also more generally to the prevention of emerging epidemics shaped by human behaviours.

Uganda has received praise for its success in dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic. This opinion piece uses publically available data from Johns Hopkins University to suggest that it is far from clear whether the Public Health and Social Measures (PHSM) introduced in Uganda influenced the course of the first outbreak. In addition, the analysis of data from the second and third waves in Uganda suggest that government action had little or no effect on these outbreaks. The dominant narrative of successful PHSM, therefore, needs to be reconsidered, and alternative explanations for the low rates of COVID-19-related mortality in the country need to be further understood.

Vaccines for COVID-19 began to be available in Africa from mid-2021. This paper reports on local reactions to the possibility of vaccination in one West African country, Sierra Leone. We show that the history of institutionalisation of vaccine is highly relevant to understanding these reactions. Given lack of testing for the disease, medical authorities could not be sure whether there was a hidden epidemic. In addition, many people associate vaccination with care of children under 5 years, and not adults, and an emphasis on vaccinating the old at first seemed strange and worrying. This paper examines evidence from ethnographic studies in two rural areas selected for varying exposure to Ebola Virus Disease (EVD), supplemented by some interviews in two provincial urban centres, Bo and Kenema. We describe local ideas about vaccination (maklet) and body marking with leaf medicine (tεwi). We asked about attitudes to the idea of COVID-19 vaccination both before and after vaccines were available. A number of reasons were given for scepticism and hesitation. These included lack of experience with vaccines for adults and lack of experience of COVID-19 as a severe disease. Medical evidence suggests the vaccination protects against serious illness, but local people had their own views about control of infection, based both recent experience (notably EVD) and the history and institutionalisation of vaccination and public health measures in Sierra Leone more broadly.