August 21, 2020 - Pandemic to Prosperity: Chronicling the Path from Response to Recovery

About This Series

History has shown that large-scale crises accelerate pre-existing trends and permanently change societies and civic life. While most of the nation’s attention is currently focused on the response to Covid-19, we must ensure that recovery efforts in the months and years ahead lead to a more just and equitable society. Pandemic to Prosperity offers a comprehensive overview of the Covid-related impacts on our lives and livelihoods, governments, civic institutions, and overall well being.

Pandemic to Prosperity is a trusted, relevant, and highly-vetted source of information crucial for steering society toward a fair and complete recovery, yielding a better union than before the pandemic. This curated report analyzes disparate data, adding top-level insights about the implications of each indicator, what each indicator reveals, and how the indicators are interrelated. Such a resource is essential in a world where there is almost too much data to process and verified facts are often overcome by disinformation.

Recovery from the pandemic will vary across communities, and different populations will face different barriers to achieving shared prosperity. Pandemic to Prosperity’s thoughtfully-curated data will make the challenges facing the nation’s most vulnerable populations visible so they are not left behind. In addition, this reliable, unbiased source of information will be essential in aligning efforts across public and private sectors, and eliminate working at cross-purposes.

The National Conference on Citizenship (NCOC) developed the Pandemic to Prosperity series that builds on NCOC’s data infrastructure and advocacy network developed for its national Civic Health Index, and leverages the authors’ success with The New Orleans Index, which informed a myriad of public and private decisions and actions post-Katrina. The common base of trusted information conveyed through the Pandemic to Prosperity series will support active, alert, and conscientious recovery efforts – that include all of America.The Pandemic to Prosperity series will provide a solid understanding of damage to lives and livelihoods as these continue to unfold, but will also examine aspirational goals around strong and accountable government, functioning institutions from child care to internet to local news availability, and outcomes for people broken down by race in regard to employment, health, housing etc. It will be published at a monthly cadence initially with indicators shifting as recovery transitions. It will highlight state-level metrics with breakdowns by race, gender, and age where available, relying on both public and private data sources.