The pandemic of COVID-19 poses us unprecedented challenges for understanding the relations between public health, built environments and societies. In the field of Epidemiology, the challenge of reassessing mortality from natural causes is intensified by limitations of the official death accounting system, which prevents us from knowing the real effects of epidemics in real time. Therefore, one of the central axes of RECOVIDA Project was developed by a cooperation between professors and researchers from the University of São Paulo (Medical School, Mathematics and Statistics Institute) and employees of the Health Department of the City of São Paulo, aiming to accelerate the processes of reassessing mortality causes in the city.

At the same time, betting on the hypothesis that degree of lethality and mortality pattern of the disease is multicausal, another axis of this research is structured from an interdisciplinary analysis of   social, urban, political, and economic conditions, to understand the dynamics that might influence the patterns of COVID-19 mortality São Paulo city.  So, this axis consists of is three distinct and complementary research approaches: a) territorial and urbanistic; b) anthropological research with family members of fatal victims of COVID-19 and people diagnosed with the disease; and c) research with professionals from Unidades Básicas de Saúde – UBS (Primary Care Units). For this purpose, there was an effort from professors of several USP units (Architecture and Urbanism, Geography, Anthropology, Public Policies, Economics, Mathematics, etc) and other institutions, such as the Foundation School of Sociology and Politics of São Paulo and the Getúlio Vargas Foundation.

The field research is carried out in six specific territories, which correspond to the UBSs coverage areas. The Project aimed to settle its fieldwork research group with researchers who lived in the selected areas. Hence, as a secondary effect, the research allows community engagement with active participation and the training of new researchers, breaking down social barriers that still exist in academy.

The territorial research identifies the urban characteristics and housing conditions that could influence   on spreading the pandemic, and consequently the higher mortality rates in the selected places. In conjunction with the territorial analysis, the project explores the perceptions and practices of health professionals working in these territories, to understand how primary health care is responding to the pandemic. At the same time, the project also dialogues with agents/community leaders and residents to evaluate how the population has organized itself, and what are the day-to-day conditions and activities of the places that influence the higher or lower mortality rates by COVID-19. And, finally, it aims to evaluate maternal mortality, to understand the effects of the pandemic on pregnant and postpartum women. Thus, this research, developed since July 2020, proposes shed light into those issues, providing some explanations of great importance for the formulation of public policies, especially those related to the containment of epidemics, producing knowledge beneficial to society now, and in the future.