A comparative study of international and Chinese public health emergency management from the perspective of knowledge domains mapping

Public health emergency decisions are explored to ensure the emergency response measures in an environment where various emergencies occur frequently. An emergency decision is essentially a multi-criteria risk decision-making problem. The feasibility of applying prospect theory to emergency decisions is analyzed, and how psychological behaviors of decision-makers impact decision-making results are quantified. On this basis, the cognitive process of public health emergencies is investigated based on the rough set theory. A Decision Rule Extraction Algorithm (denoted as A-DRE) that considers attribute costs is proposed, which is then applied for attribute reduction and rule extraction on emergency datasets. In this way, decision-makers can obtain reduced decision table attributes quickly. Considering that emergency decisions require the participation of multiple departments, a framework is constructed to solve multi-department emergency decisions. The technical characteristics of the blockchain are in line with the requirements of decentralization and multi-party participation in emergency management. The core framework of the public health emergency management system-plan, legal system, mechanism, and system can play an important role. When delta { = }0.10, the classification accuracy under the K-Nearest Neighbor (KNN) classifier reaches 73.5%. When delta { = }0.15, the classification accuracy under the Support Vector Machines (SVM) classifier reaches 86.4%. It can effectively improve China’s public health emergency management system and improve the efficiency of emergency management. By taking Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) as an example, the weight and prospect value functions of different decision-maker attributes are constructed based on prospect theory. The optimal rescue plan is finally determined. A-DRE can consider the cost of each attribute in the decision table and the ability to classify it correctly; moreover, it can reduce the attributes and extract the rules on the COVID-19 dataset, suitable for decision-makers' situation face once an emergency occurs. The emergency decision approach based on rough set attribute reduction and prospect theory can acquire practical decision-making rules while considering the different risk preferences of decision-makers facing different decision-making results, which is significant for the rapid development of public health emergency assistance and disaster relief.

The outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-2019) is an especially serious public health emergency in the world. China has made some achievements in the containment of COVID-2019 epidemic. However, there are some problems in system, mechanism, legislation and emergency preparedness plan. The study analyzed the problems and made some recommendations for the improvement of national public health emergency management.

An estimated 2.5 million people have been internally and externally displaced in the Tigray region of northern Ethiopia in conflict and post-conflict settings. This induced a loss of access to basic and essential healthcare services. The situation was overwhelming, causing service inaccessibility, inadequate health facilities, unstable security to access the services, shortage of supplies and drugs, and medical equipment’s in the region. The regional public health emergency management is one service delivery set up for the critically ill. It is characterized by weak emergency management capacities, poor coordination and integration. In addition, the system falls in to two independent sectors in the Tigray Health Bureau (THB), Tigray Health Research Institute (THRI). This leads to a fragmented system, an unclear leadership and governance role and a poor service delivery setup and tracking mechanism. The situation leads to resource duplication and poor business practice. Indeed, this type of service delivery setup secures personal and professional interest more than community interest. The situation exacerbated the occurrence of recurrent outbreaks in the region, with, for instance, zoonotic diseases (anthrax and rabies), acute watery diarrhoea, measles, malaria, yellow fever, and coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) approaching to their level of epidemic. Moreover, they will spike as an epidemic in the future. All these circumstances made it evident that the system need reform to adhere with legal global, national, and regional frameworks, guidelines and proclamations. The system should have one service delivery set up at regional level. It must fall into regional public health institutes (PHIs) to adhere its service packages to the current advancements. Furthermore, integrated effort need from program implementers, relevant stakeholders and policy-makers should be committed and work together in the review and reform process.

Against the background of the worldwide spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, due to the lack of effective collaborative incentive mechanisms, issues of dislocation and incoordination have emerged in the public health emergency management system (PES) globally. Nevertheless, the available research rarely touches upon the incentive mechanism design for the collaborative management of PES. To alleviate these inefficiency operations problems with PES, three game-theoretical decision models, including a decentralized decision model without public governance policy incentive (GPI), a decentralized decision model with GPI, and a collaborative decision model with GPI, were developed and analyzed to explore and design the incentive mechanism of PES. Furthermore, the corresponding numerical and sensitivity analyses were conducted to validate the modelling results in the article. The research results show that: (1) the collaborative decision scenario with GPI performs best, and the decentralized decision scenario with GPI performs second-best regarding the equilibrium emergency management efforts (EMEs) and utilities in all the decision scenarios; (2) an incentive mechanism of the “carrot + Stick” can effectively enhance the collaborative management of public health emergencies and its governance-driven operational performance/efficiency; (3) strengthening the performance assessment of emergency management for relevant government departments is beneficial in improving the overall emergency management efficiency of the PES; (4) reducing the cost of EMEs and enhancing the effectiveness of EMEs are conducive to improving the overall emergency management efficiency of the PES. This research provides a novel framework for designing an effective incentive mechanism to overcome the incoordination impacts and achieve collaborative operations across the PES.

Speed is key to prevent and control major public health emergencies. For an efficient management, time, data, information, and resources are important factors. This paper summarizes the challenges in China's response to the coronavirus disease 2019(COVID-19), and proposes an integration of vertical system and horizontal system, based on the idea oflet data run more, rely on accurate information, and outperform viruses with electromagnetic waves . Through all the analyses, we provide suggestions on improving China's digital public health emergency management system for scientific and technological strategies, and they include: (1) establishing a standardized data epidemic information collection system to dynamically sense public sentiment; (2) building a public health big data center with a unified spatiotemporal benchmark to achieve cross-regional and cross-industry data aggregation, fusion, and sharing; (3) strengthening artificial intelligence technology for epidemic monitoring, forecasting, and risk research, and improving management accuracy and screening efficiency; (4) developing situation deduction and optimizing regulatory computing technology and services scientific dispatch and emergency command; (5) improving operating system mechanisms to ensure normal, safe and stable operations.

BackgroundPublic health emergencies have challenged the public health emergency management systems (PHEMSs) of many countries critically and frequently since this century. As the world’s most populated country and the second biggest economy in the world, China used to have a fragile PHEMS; however, the government took forceful actions to build PHEMS after the 2003 SARS outbreak. After more than one decade’s efforts, we tried to assess the improvements and problems of China’s PHEMS between 2002 and 2012.MethodsWe conducted two rounds of national surveys and collected the data of the year 2002 and 2012, including all 32 provincial, 139 municipal, and 489 county CDCs. The municipal and county CDCs were selected by systematic random sampling. Twenty-one indicators of four stages (preparation, readiness, response and recovery) from the National Assessment Criteria for CDC Performance were chosen to assess the ten-year trends.ResultsAt the preparation stage, organization, mechanisms, workforce, and stockpile across all levels and regions were significantly improved after one decade’s efforts. At the readiness stage, the capability for formulating an emergency plan was also significantly improved during the same period. At the response stage, internet-based direct reporting was 98.8%, and coping scores were nearly full points of ten in 2012. At the recovery stage, the capabilities were generally lower than expected.ConclusionsDue to forceful leadership, sounder regulations, and intensive resources, China’s PHEMS has been improved at the preparation, readiness, and response stages; however, the recovery stage was still weak and could not meet the requirements of crisis management and preventive governance. In addition, CDCs in the Western region and counties lagged behind in performance on most indicators. Future priorities should include developing the recovery stage, establishing a closed feedback loop, and strengthening the capabilities of CDCs in Western region and counties.

Public health emergency management has been one of the main challenges of social sustainable development since the beginning of the 21st century. Research on public health emergency management is becoming a common focus of scholars. In recent years, the literature associated with public health emergency management has grown rapidly, but few studies have used a bibliometric analysis and visualization approach to conduct deep mining and explore the characteristics of the public health emergency management research field. To better understand the present status and development of public health emergency management research, and to explore the knowledge base and research hotspots, the bibliometric method and science mapping technology were adopted to visually evaluate the knowledge structure and research trends in the field of public health emergency management studies. From 2000 to 2020, a total of 3723 papers related to public health emergency management research were collected from the Web of Science Core Collection as research data. The five main research directions formed are child prevention, mortality from public health events, public health emergency preparedness, public health emergency management, and coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). The current research hotspots and frontiers are climate change, COVID-19 and related coronaviruses. Further research is needed to focus on the COVID-19 and related coronaviruses. This study intends to contribute inclusive support to related academia and industry in the aspects of public health emergency management and public safety research, as well as research hotspots and future research directions.

Objective: This study aimed at exploring the current development status and problems of health emergency management in China and provides a reference for improving, constructing, and implementing a public health emergency management system.Methods: Cases of major and severe public health emergencies in China were analyzed along with the relevant health emergency management literature from the last decade.Results: China's health emergency system gradually improved during the study period. Monitoring and early warning systems were significantly strengthened. Material reserves and transfer management systems were constantly improved. However, the operational efficiency of command and decision systems was low, versatile talent accounted for a relatively small proportion, and emergency fund investment was insufficient.Conclusion: Constructing a sound and scientific emergency management mechanism is a lengthy and challenging process. To establish an emergency management mode for public health emergencies that is appropriate for China, it is necessary to solve existing problems and learn from the models and experiences of developed foreign countries.

Aims How the Chinese government controls the Covid-19 epidemic? This paper aims to answer this question from the perspective of public health expenditure, and policy, and then to help the government to perform better in infectious disease prevention and public health emergency management. Methods and materials We reviewed the development phases of the COVID-19 epidemic in China and divided it into four stages (incubation stage, outbreak stage, resolution stage, and stable stage). Then we adopted a content analysis method via MAXQDA2020, to analyze the combined application of four different types of policy tools in different stages with 571 texts of epidemic governance policy from the Chinese central government. We also calculated and compared the Chinese public health expenditure between epidemic and non-epidemic periods. Moreover, we also discussed implications for public health emergency management and for infectious disease prevention and control in China. Results (1) in the incubation stage, the potential epidemic has not attracted enough attention from the government; (2) the combination of the 4 types of policies is not only an important reason in controlling epidemic during the outbreak stage and resolution stage, but also the reason why the small-scale epidemic has not expanded in the stable stage; (3) the increasing Chinese public health expenditure, involving public health emergency treatment (114.81 billion yuan), government hospitals (284.84 billion yuan) and major public health service projects (45.33 billion yuan), is another critical reason for the rapid control of the epidemic. Conclusion and implications Public health expenditure and policy played an important role in the governance and control of the COVID-19 epidemic in China. Some limitations of China’s infectious disease prevention system and public health emergency management system have been exposed to the public in this epidemic, which the Chinese government needs to improve in the future.

At present, major public health emergencies frequently occur worldwide, and it is of great significance to analyze the research status and latest developments in this field to improve the ability of public health emergency management in various countries. This paper took 5,143 related studies from 2007 to 2020 from the Web of Science as research object and used CiteSpace, VOSviewer, and other software to perform co-word analysis, social network analysis, and cluster analysis. The results and conclusions were as follows: (1) the related research identified three periods: the exploration, growth, and outbreak period; (2) chronologically: the relevant research evolved from medical and health care for major diseases to emergency management and risk assessment of public health emergencies and then researched the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pneumonia epidemic; (3) clustering analysis of high-frequency keywords, identifying three research hotspots: “disaster prevention and emergency medical services,” “outbreak and management of infectious diseases in Africa,” and “emergency management under the COVID-19 pneumonia epidemic.” Finally, this study combined the data and literature analysis to point out possible future research directions: from the research of the COVID-19 pneumonia epidemic to the research of general major public health emergencies, thinking and remodeling of the national public health emergency management system, and exploring the establishment of an efficient international emergency management cooperation mechanism.

Some jurisdictions have reduced workforce and reallocated responsibilities for public health preparedness and emergency management to more efficiently use resources and improve planning and response. Key informant interviews were conducted in six counties in North Carolina (USA) to discuss perceptions of the challenges and opportunities provided by the new shared positions. Respondents feel that planning and response have improved, but that requirements related to activities or equipment that are eligible for funding (particularly on the public health side) can present an impediment to consolidating public health preparedness and emergency management roles. As the financial resources available for public health preparedness and emergency management continue to be reduced, the merging of the roles and responsibilities of public health preparedness and emergency management may present jurisdictions with an effective alternative to reducing staff, and potentially, readiness.

At present, many administrators lack a theoretical guide to build management systems to cope with public health emergencies. This study developed a detailed function list for public health emergency management to help building the management systems scientifically. The five steps in this study including literature review, semistructured interviews with experts, focus group, Delphi study and focus group were conducted to develop the detailed list of functions. An initial list of 25 functions with 188 items was formed through literature review. The list was reduced to 10 functions with 57 items by semistructured interviews with experts and focus group. Next, all these 57 items reached the consensus through one-round Delphi study. Some revisions of the consensus were done by the same focus group. The final 10 functions with 57 items could be used as a guide for most countries during their building of a public health emergency management system.

The purpose of this paper is to promote the construction of digital healthy cities and improve the living standards of urban residents. Based on this, this paper analyzes the development of healthy cities, and studies community public health safety emergency management and nursing insurance service optimization methods for healthy urban environment construction. First, the concept of digital healthy urban environment construction is discussed. Then, the role of environmental health is discussed. Finally, two methods are designed to study the emergency management of public health safety and nursing insurance services in urban communities under the condition of environmental health. The results show that in the environmental health score of the city, the scores of X1 (the urban air quality excellent rate) and X6 (citizens' satisfaction with the environmental quality) were relatively low between 2016 and 2018, below 0.5 points. The scores for the remaining 3 years were relatively high, above 0.5. The scores of X2 (green coverage rate of built-up area), X3 (average grade sound effect of environmental noise in urban area), X4 (harmless treatment rate of domestic waste) and X5 (centralized treatment rate of domestic sewage) were relatively high from 2016 to 2018, above 0.5 points, and relatively low in the remaining 3 years, below 0.5 points. Meanwhile, residents are very satisfied with information collection and information management in public health and safety emergency management, and the number of very satisfied people is basically more than 40%. Satisfaction with resource allocation and privacy management is high, and the number of very satisfied people is basically above 30%. However, the satisfaction with risk perception and management measures is very low, and the number of very satisfied people is basically below 20%. It shows that the current construction of the community's public health and safety emergency management system is relatively poor in terms of X2–X5, while the development of X1 and X6 is relatively mature. The research not only provides a reference for the construction and improvement of a digital healthy city, but also contributes to the improvement of the healthy life of urban residents.

Introduction:As public health emergency management (PHEM) is a growing field, so is the development of its workforce. Ensuring workforce readiness from graduate-level education and courses can be challenging given the limitations of the traditional classroom environment. This presentation highlights a novel curriculum created and taught by first responders consisting of simulation and application of practical skills developed within a public health graduate certificate program.Method:The semester-long course reviews foundations of PHEM and students progress through a sequence of increasingly complex discussions and operation-based exercises for both domestic and international disaster preparedness and response. Students progress through case studies, tabletops, functional exercises, and full-scale exercises with practical skills interspersed. This includes creation of SMART objectives and incident action planning, crisis communication and public messaging drills, use of radios, personal protective donning and doffing, and Geiger counter use.During the COVID-19 pandemic, the curriculum was adapted for asynchronous and live virtual sessions with further offerings including various online trainings that are required for most employments in the field and guest speakers with national recognition for their experiences in public health and healthcare emergency management and subject matter expertise in various fields related to preparedness and response.Results:Since commencing in 2016, approximately 100 students have completed the course and feedback has been overwhelmingly positive even with limitations of in-person activities during the COVID-19 Pandemic. Student feedback has noted that the majority of students feel that the knowledge and skills from the coursework is applicable to future employment and that their ability to think critically about the subject matter increased as a result of taking the course.Conclusion:Implementation of this innovative graduate level course can serve as a model to enrich students’ education through practical activities and hands-on simulations.

BackgroundThe outbreak of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) severely damaged and endangered people’s lives at the end of 2019. Risk communication plays an important role in the response to it successfully, which has been appreciated by the World Health Organization. Therefore, a comprehensive analysis of risk communication research is necessary, which can understand current research hotspots and reveal new trends.MethodsIn this study, we collected 1134 international articles from the Web of Science database and 3983 Chinese articles from the China National Knowledge Infrastructure database. Bibliometric and mapping knowledge domain analysis methods were used for temporal distribution analysis, cooperation network analysis, co-word network analysis, and burst detection analysis.ResultsThe first article in this field was published by western scholars earlier, while the first Chinese article in 2002. Research institutions mainly come from universities. The USA plays a key role in this field. Chinese scholars had a closer cooperation network, but there was less cooperation among domestic institutions. Risk perception, trust, risk management, and risk information had always been the research hotspots in this academic. Trust, sentiment research, and public risk events were essential directions for the future. There are 25 burst words for international articles, while 11 burst words for Chinese articles from 2000 to 2020.ConclusionsIn summary, both domestic and international researchers are concerned about risk communication, risk perception, trust, and risk information. International research on risk communication is systematic and comprehensive relatively. However, Chinese scholars take severe acute respiratory syndrome as the research background and reviewing foreign knowledge as the research starting point. With the purpose of practical and applied research based on a public emergency, the risk communication research lacks continuity in Chinese academy in the past years.