Assessing public health emergency preparedness

A scoping review on recent tools and methods

Datos Bibliográficos

ID22026096
AutoresScott Chiossi (0000-0002-1764-3518, European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, autor de correspondencia), Svetla Tsolova (0000-0003-1359-2503, European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control), Massimo Ciotti (0000-0003-1965-7769, European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control)
Año2021
Volumen56
Páginas102104
Fecha de publicación2021-04-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaInternational Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 2212-4209
EditorialElsevier BV (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1016/j.ijdrr.2021.102104
OpenAlexW3127170580
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas10
Referencias citadas32

Assessing public health emergency preparedness (PHEP) can help monitor and improve systems' capacities and capabilities. Yet, measuring preparedness is a complex process and available assessment approaches have numerous limitations. To review gaps and strengths of current assessment tools and methods, a scoping review was conducted based on peer-assessed and grey literature published between 2013 and 2019 describing PHEP assessments. A total of 32 articles were selected, the majority being assessments implemented at national level (44%, N = 14). Assessments were mainly formatted as questionnaires/surveys (41%, N = 13), followed by checklists (25%, N = 8), interviews or group discussions (16%, N = 5), and tools that extracted information directly from data sources (13%, N = 4). The most frequent analytical approach adopted in the reviewed articles was quantitative analysis (N = 16, 50%), followed by qualitative analysis (N = 12, 38%) and mixed methods (N = 3, 9%). In most of the articles the assessment results were reported by listing gaps in preparedness (N = 9, 28%), a preparedness score with defined preparedness levels/margins (N = 6, 19%) or a preparedness score with descriptive figures (N = 6, 19%). The elements of preparedness incorporated in each assessment were also reviewed in this paper, the most common domains being “Pre-event preparation and governance” and “Event response management”. Overall, from the reviewed articles, we identified important features and points of improvement that assessment approaches should undertake. These suggestions include the need for assessments to identify and specify appropriate stakeholders to conduct and complete the evaluation; the importance of reaching a consensus on what preparedness standards to measure; and the need for further research on minimising the biases specific to each assessment format

Emergency management · Medical education · Medical emergency · Political science · Preparedness · Process management · Disaster Management and Resilience · Disaster Response and Management · Engineering · Medicine · Psychology · Viral Infections and Outbreaks Research