Public health emergency preparedness for infectious disease emergencies: a scoping review of recent evidence.

BACKGROUND: The COVID-19 pandemic continues to demonstrate the risks and profound health impacts that result from infectious disease emergencies. Emergency preparedness has been defined as the knowledge, capacity and organizational systems that governments, response and recovery organizations, communities and individuals develop to anticipate, respond to, or recover from emergencies. This scoping review explored recent literature on priority areas and indicators for public health emergency preparedness (PHEP) with a focus on infectious disease emergencies. METHODS: Using scoping review methodology, a comprehensive search was conducted for indexed and grey literature with a focus on records published from 2017 to 2020 onward, respectively. Records were included if they: (a) described PHEP, (b) focused on an infectious emergency, and (c) were published in an Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development country. An evidence-based all-hazards Resilience Framework for PHEP consisting of 11 elements was used as a reference point to identify additional areas of preparedness that have emerged in recent publications. The findings were analyzed deductively and summarized thematically. RESULTS: The included publications largely aligned with the 11 elements of the all-hazards Resilience Framework for PHEP. In particular, the elements related to collaborative networks, community engagement, risk analysis and communication were frequently observed across the publications included in this review. Ten emergent themes were identified that expand on the Resilience Framework for PHEP specific to infectious diseases. Planning to mitigate inequities was a key finding of this review, it was the most frequently identified emergent theme. Additional emergent themes were: research and evidence-informed decision making, building vaccination capacity, building laboratory and diagnostic system capacity, building infection prevention and control capacity, financial investment in infrastructure, health system capacity, climate and environmental health, public health legislation and phases of preparedness. CONCLUSION: The themes from this review contribute to the evolving understanding of critical public health emergency preparedness actions. The themes expand on the 11 elements outlined in the Resilience Framework for PHEP, specifically relevant to pandemics and infectious disease emergencies. Further research will be important to validate these findings, and expand understanding of how refinements to PHEP frameworks and indicators can support public health practice.

Rising through the pandemic: a scoping review of quality improvement in public health during the COVID-19 pandemic.

BACKGROUND: The COVID-19 pandemic generated a growing interest in and need for evidence-based tools to facilitate the implementation of emergency management strategies within public health practice. Quality improvement (QI) is a key framework and philosophy to guide organizational emergency response efforts; however, the nature and extent to which it has been used in public health settings during the COVID-19 pandemic remains unclear. METHODS: We conducted a scoping review of literature published January 2020 - February 2021 and focused on the topic of QI at public health agencies during the COVID-19 pandemic. The search was conducted using four bibliographic databases, in addition to a supplementary grey literature search through custom Google search engines and targeted website search methods. Of the 1,878 peer-reviewed articles assessed, 15 records met the inclusion criteria. An additional 11 relevant records were identified during the grey literature search, for a total of 26 records included in the scoping review. RESULTS: Records were organized into five topics: 1) collaborative problem solving and analysis with stakeholders; 2) supporting learning and capacity building in QI; 3) learning from past emergencies; 4) implementing QI methods during COVID-19; and 5) evaluating performance using frameworks/indicators. CONCLUSIONS: The literature indicates that QI-oriented activities are occurring at the organizational and program levels to enhance COVID-19 response. To optimize the benefits that QI approaches and methodologies may offer, it is important for public health agencies to focus on both widespread integration of QI as part of an organization's management philosophy and culture, as well as project level activities at all stages of the emergency management cycle.