NHS Voices of Covid-19: Creating a national collection to document and understand the impact and legacy of a pandemic through personal testimonies

We will develop a national collection of personal testimonies and in-depth reflections around Covid-19 that will be preserved at the British Library as a permanent public resource for informing policy and practice. This builds on the infrastructure of the NHS@70 project which has been working across the four nations of the UK, gathering testimony from patients, staff, policymakers and the public since 2017 about experiences of health and the place of the NHS in everyday life and work - nhs70.org.uk. NHS@70 has trained over 150 volunteer interviewers in oral history methodologies and collected upwards of 1000 recordings. The Covid-19 work will deliver an additional 900 oral history interview sessions capturing experiences and reflections across region, age, race, gender and class. This will create an evidence-base that produces understandings of the social significance of Covid-19. Working with stakeholders across health and the voluntary sector and using co-production methods, we will identify priority themes for rapid data analysis and develop resources to feed learning into policy and practice. Developing the collection through NHS@70 will add unique value by enabling shifts in experiences, practices and policies around health and the NHS to be interrogated through defined time periods of before, during and after Covid-19. Embedding Covid-19 in the longer history of UK health will produce richer understandings of its impacts and legacy. This distinguishes this project from others that seek to create understandings from personal testimony. Importantly, building this new study out of the NHS@70 project means that if successful, we will start work immediately.