The Public Health Governance of the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Bibliometric Analysis.

Keng Yang,Hanying Qi

doi:10.3390/healthcare10020299

Abstract

The 2019 global outbreak of COVID-19 has had a huge impact on public health governance systems around the world. In response, numerous scholars have conducted research on public health governance in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper provides a bibliometric analysis of 1437 documents retrieved from the Web of Science (WoS) core collection database, with 49,695 references. It analyses the research directions, countries of publications, core journals, leading authors and institutions and important publications. The paper also summarises research trends by analysing the co-occurrence of keywords, frequently cited documents and co-cited references. It summarises the global responses to COVID-19, including public health interventions and a range of supporting policies based on the features and impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. The paper provides comprehensive literary support and clear lines of research for future studies on the governance or regulation of public health emergencies.

Highlights

Academic Editor: Christian Napoli In December 2019, a new coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) emerged, triggering an outbreak of human acute respiratory syndrome centred in Wuhan, China [1]; this pandemic has become known as the 2019 coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic
According to data from the World Health Organisation (WHO), by the end of October 2021, there were more than million confirmed cases of COVID-19 worldwide, including more than 5 million deaths (available online: WHO Coronavirus (COVID-19) Dashboard, https://covid19.who.int/, date of access 1 December 2021)
According to the Web of Science (WoS) research directions, research related to public health governance during COVID-19 covers a total of 131 areas

Summary

Introduction

In December 2019, a new coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) emerged, triggering an outbreak of human acute respiratory syndrome centred in Wuhan, China [1]; this pandemic has become known as the 2019 coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic. The COVID-19 pandemic has led to a massive global public health campaign, with government departments and public health agencies advocating increased hand washing, wearing masks in public places and social distancing to slow the spread of the virus. The outbreak of COVID-19 has highlighted the importance of having strong public health governance systems in place to safeguard public health. Public health governance has a multifaceted role. Helgesen (2014) argues that public health governance has two main roles: ‘health promotion’ and ‘disease prevention’ [2]. Carlson et al (2015) defined six functions of public health governance:

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