Public health preparedness for infectious disease emergencies
Citation: Lee JM, Jansen R, Sanderson KE, et al. Public health emergency preparedness for infectious disease emergencies: a scoping review of recent evidence. BMC Public Health. 2023;23:420.
Language: EN.
Free to view: Yes.
Funding sources: The authors reported no external funding.
What is this? In this scoping review, the authors searched for peer-reviewed, pre-print, and grey literature about public health emergency preparedness (PHEP) and how it evolved during the COVID-19 pandemic. They restricted their searches to material published in English from 2017 onwards and from countries that were members of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. The authors searched in March 2022 and found 26 articles.
What was found? The literature reflected the 11 elements of the all-hazards Resilience Framework for PHEP: collaborative networks, community engagement, risk analysis, communication, planning process, governance and leadership, surveillance and monitoring, resources, workforce capacity, learning and evaluation, and practice and experience. A crucial, frequently observed theme was planning to mitigate inequities. Additional themes were research and evidence-informed decision-making, building vaccination capacity, laboratory and diagnostic systems, infection prevention and control, financial investment in infrastructure, health system, climate, and environmental health, public health legislation, and phases of preparedness.
Implications: Strategies and indicators to mitigate health inequities are urgently needed. Continued review and risk assessments are crucial to reduce morbidity and mortality.
Other considerations: The authors of the review discussed their findings in the context of race.
This summary was prepared by Eszter Szocs, checked by Jawaria Karim, and finalized by William Summerskill.