Public Health Network Structure and Collaboration Effectiveness during the 2015 MERS Outbreak in South Korea: An Institutional Collective Action Framework.

Kyungwoo Kim,Simon Andrew,Kyujin Jung

doi:10.3390/ijerph14091064

Abstract

Following the 2015 Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) outbreak in South Korea, this research aims to examine the structural effect of public health network explaining collaboration effectiveness, which is defined as joint efforts to improve quality of service provision, cost savings, and coordination. We tested the bonding and bridging effects on collaboration effectiveness during the MERS outbreak response by utilizing an institutional collective action framework. The analysis results of 114 organizations responding during the crisis show a significant association between the bonding effect and the effectiveness of collaboration, as well as a positive association between risk communication in disseminating public health information and the effectiveness of collaboration.

Highlights

The effectiveness of collaboration reflects a successful implementation of planned actions and procedures to coordinate join activities among seemingly independent set of private and public agencies
This study aims to develop theories to understand a self-organized mechanism to mitigate collective action dilemmas derived from public health network responding to an epidemic event in
While much of the current research on the application of the Institutional Collective Action (ICA) framework tends to focus on policy arenas in the realm of water conservation, public good markets, and local sustainable policy [1,9,10], this paper examines the advantages of collaboration in the area of public health emergency response

Summary

Introduction

The effectiveness of collaboration reflects a successful implementation of planned actions and procedures to coordinate join activities among seemingly independent set of private and public agencies. An effective collaboration captures meaningful interactions previously developed by agencies and a set of planned actions and procedures contributing to an effective cooperation among various levels of public agencies and private organizations during a crisis [1,2]. Current literatures on public health emergency response have been silent on the relationship between social positions of organizations and the tangible or intangible advantages that individual organizations can gain from the positions [6]. There are at least two competing perspectives on mechanisms explaining what organizations can expect to gain from their interactions, i.e., as to what type of connections should be sought by organizations in order to reap the advantage of social interactions [7,8]. The bridging perspective suggests public health emergency response requires rapidity and agility of responders to act

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