From Social to Collective Capital: Factors behind the Success of a COVID-19 Task Force

Abstract

Social capital offers an important framework for understanding community disaster preparedness and resiliency at both the individual and community levels. Social capital also offers a lens for understanding interorganizational collaboration, particularly for public health disasters. Yet missing from the literature is an exploration of how social capital at the individual level may develop into collective capital at the group level, to then be leveraged for community public health disaster management. We conducted a mixed-methods case study of an emergent rural task force that formed to manage the COVID-19 pandemic. Using social network and qualitative analysis, we find that pre-existing relationships, leadership, goal congruence, and frequent meetings helped develop individual-level social capital into collective capital. The findings from this study have implications for strengthening the nexus of public health and disaster management and the creation of collective capital that can help communities better respond to future disasters.