Safeguarding welfare in times of pandemics: towards collaborative governance of syndemics (WELGO)

Even the most welfare-enhancing policies and services will fail to deliver welfare if they are discarded or disrupted in crisis conditions. WELGO consortium tackles the challenge of how to safeguard welfare in exceptional governance circumstances created by rapidly escalating health crises such as pandemics. We develop learning pathways towards socially and politically sustainable governance of future health crises in Finland on the basis of lessons of the COVID-19 pandemic. Future large-scale health crises are seen as syndemics whose governance tackles the escalating health threats simultaneously with other social and health problems under exceptional governance conditions. WELGO initiates, diffuses and institutionalizes societal learning pathways towards increased sensitivity to syndemic aspects of crises, enhanced abilities to develop reflexive health crisis governance, and increased collaboration skills and capacities for agile and adaptive crisis governance.