Planning for pandemic: a new model for governing public health emergencies

Governing public health emergencies during the coronavirus disease outbreak: Lessons from four Chinese cities in the first wave

The ongoing coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic has had a far-reaching impact on urban living, prompting emergency preparedness and response from public health governance at multiple levels. The Chinese government has adopted a series of policy measures to control infectious disease, for which cities are the key spatial units. This research traces and reports analyses of those policy measures and their evolution in four Chinese cities: Zhengzhou, Hangzhou, Shanghai and Chengdu. The theoretical framework stems from conceptualisations of urban governance and its role in public health emergencies, wherein crisis management and emergency response are highlighted. In all four cities, the trend curves of cumulative diagnosed cases, critical policies launched in key time nodes and local governance approaches in the first wave were identified and compared. The findings suggest that capable local leadership is indispensable for controlling the coronavirus epidemic, yet local governments' approaches are varied, contributing to dissimilar local epidemic control policy pathways and positive outcomes in the fight against COVID-19. The effectiveness of disease control is determined by how local governments' measures have adapted to geospatial and socioeconomic heterogeneity. The coordinated actions from central to local governments also reveal an efficient, top-down command transmission and execution system for coping with the pandemic. This article argues that effective control of pandemics requires both a holistic package of governance strategies and locally adaptive governance measures/processes, and concludes with proposals for both a more effective response at the local level and identification of barriers to achieving these responses within diverse subnational institutional contexts.

Promoting public health legal preparedness for emergencies: review of current trends and their relevance in light of the Ebola crisis

BACKGROUND

Public health legal preparedness (PHLP) for emergencies is a core component of the health system response. However, the implementation of health legal preparedness differs between low- and middle-income countries (LMIC) and developed countries.

OBJECTIVE

This paper examines recent trends regarding public health legal preparedness for emergencies and discusses its role in the recent Ebola outbreak.

DESIGN

A rigorous literature review was conducted using eight electronic databases as well as Google Scholar. The results encompassed peer-reviewed English articles, reports, theses, and position papers dating from 2011 to 2014. Earlier articles concerning regulatory actions were also examined.

RESULTS

The importance of PHLP has grown during the past decade and focuses mainly on infection-disease scenarios. Amid LMICs, it mostly refers to application of international regulations, whereas in developed states, it focuses on independent legislation and creation of conditions optimal to promoting an effective emergency management. Among developed countries, the United States' utilisation of health legal preparedness is the most advanced, including the creation of a model comprising four elements: law, competencies, information, and coordination. Only limited research has been conducted in this field to date. Nevertheless, in both developed and developing states, studies that focused on regulations and laws activated in health systems during emergencies, identified inconsistency and incoherence. The Ebola outbreak plaguing West Africa since 2014 has global implications, challenges and paralleling results, that were identified in this review.

CONCLUSIONS

The review has shown the need to broaden international regulations, to deepen reciprocity between countries, and to consider LMICs health capacities, in order to strengthen the national health security. Adopting elements of the health legal preparedness model is recommended.

The challenge of providing the public with actionable information during a pandemic

Analysis of media reporting on the H1N1 vaccine during the 2009 pandemic reveals a dissonance between the nature and content of the reporting, the government's messages, and the public's perceptions of vaccine safety and desirability. Despite careful attention to history and especially the lessons offered by Richard Neustadt and Harvey Fineberg in their study of the 1976 "Epidemic that Never Was," government officials failed to escape criticism for decisions made and actions taken in the midst of the unfolding contagion threat. Moreover, public opinion polls show that substantial portions of the population failed to hear, believe, or heed the government's messages. Looking at the enduring narrative of the government's vaccine efforts through the lens of newspaper reports exposes six points of distortion. These points - the pervasive uncertainty inherent in a novel contagion; advances in information technology and electronic communications; the new news environment; the political polarization of American society; the infrastructure of the American public health system; and the oddities of public health emergency and vaccination injury compensation laws - interfered with the public's reception of the government's message and infected the public's perception of government veracity and leadership capability. They challenge us to consider whether current planning is sufficient to prepare Americans to respond effectively to a lives-threatening national crisis. If we are to ensure that the public receives and recognizes accurate and actionable information essential for the prevention or containment of a deadly contagion, we will need to understand and address the impact of these distorting forces.