Building Back Better from Below

The COVID-19 pandemic has deepened existing social, health and nutritional inequities and highlighted common challenges facing marginalised and racialised communities in cities across the Global North and South. It has also driven new social innovations and cross-sector collaborations, some of which may have the potential to transform the longstanding inequities that undermine global health, food systems and governance processes.

This Trans-Atlantic collaboration will combine insights from social science research and the lived experiences of activists, social entrepreneurs, front-line workers and local public officials to identify strategies for future action to disrupt entrenched patterns of inequity and secure health rights and food justice after the pandemic. Recognising the intersecting nature of the health, food equity and democratic representation challenges the pandemic has brought, we will take an action research approach to analysing the trajectories, outcomes and sustainability of grassroots innovations and collaborations that have emerged since March 2020 among activists and front-line service providers working with marginalised and racialised communities in three socially diverse and economically dynamic but unequal cities: São Paulo (Brazil), Toronto (Canada) and Brighton (UK).

Thematic workstreams will examine innovative local initiatives to ensure access to primary health care, emergency food provision and political representation of the needs and priorities of marginalised communities disproportionately burdened by COVID-19, analysing the social, political, institutional and policy factors that have enabled or hindered effective collaboration and co-production of programmes and services between citizens and public authorities, between different levels of government and between state, community and business actors. Synthesis work will examine the outcomes and sustainability of the experiences of cross-sector policy coordination and multi-stakeholder collaboration that have emerged in the three cities during the pandemic, assessing their potential to underpin strategic and scaled-up action to tackle intersecting inequities affecting marginalised and racialised communities in Brazil, Canada, the UK and beyond.