Skip to content Skip to navigation

Vulnerabilities during Infectious Novel Disease Outbreaks: Women & School-age Children and Adolescents in Brazil

Date: 
Tuesday, April 20, 2021 - 8:30am to 9:50am
Quarter: 
Spring 2021

Vulnerabilities during Infectious Novel Disease Outbreaks: Women & School-age Children and Adolescents in Brazil

Brazil is one of the most unequal countries in the world. Brazil is also the country most affected by the recent Zika epidemic and is an epicenter of the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic. In this talk, I will introduce the DeCodE Project, funded by NICHD, its mixed-method datasets and experiments, and discuss findings that point to increasing vulnerabilities of women and school-age children and adolescents. Findings using data from semi-structured interviews and from the panel baseline with 3,998 Brazilian women of reproductive ages suggest clear spillover effects across successive novel infectious disease outbreaks that transcend a single outbreak. Further evidence suggests developmental setbacks for school-age Brazilian children and adolescents. Results are relevant everywhere the Covid-19 pandemic has been pervasive.

About Leticia Marteleto

Leticia Marteleto, Ph.D., is the principal investigator of Decode Zika. She is an associate professor of sociology and faculty research associate at The University of Texas at Austin Population Research Center. She is also a research affiliate at UT Austin’s Lozano Long Institute of Latin American Studies and has previously served as associate chair of the Department of Sociology. Her recent research has appeared in Demography, Demographic Research, Population and Development Review, Research in Social Stratification and Mobility, Social Forces and Studies in Family Planning.