Pandemic Stress Indicator: CITIZEN SCIENTIST JOURNALING ON COVID-19

The Citizen Scientist Journaling project seeks to capture the small and large costs of COVID-19 and the coping mechanisms used by individuals and communities, especially those most affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. The goal is to create a public digital archive of how Illinois residents are managing socially, emotionally, and economically using a citizen/community scientist approach.

Citizen scientists are community members working with scientists to create new knowledge and any Illinois resident can participate. Multifaceted information is collected to highlight the complexity of the impacts of COVID-19 on real people’s lives and provide personal accounts of their experiences, to produce critical insight into social, mental, and economic costs to individuals, families, and communities.

As part of this pilot project, community members from across Illinois have shared their experiences about how they are affected by the COVID-19 pandemic and shutdown and the strategies they used to cope with the stress and grief associated with the pandemic. The personal experiences they share can highlight issues that need to be addressed in terms of:

• Health

• Economics

• Social Safety Nets

• Discrimination

• Public Policy

We hope to learn more about the key factors that make people more vulnerable and resilient to the impacts of COVID-19. We also hope that others may find these experiences and any coping strategies helpful and will continue to provide updates with how this process is going.