Interagency Collaboration in Public Health Emergencies Open Access

Olatinwo, Saheedat (Spring 2022)

Permanent URL: https://etd.library.emory.edu/concern/etds/wh246t362?locale=en
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Abstract

Interagency collaboration has been promoted to protect public health. During public health emergencies, this becomes crucial to prevent, detect, and achieve prompt and effective responses. It requires agencies and organizations from diverse sectors, including human and animal health and laboratories, nutrition, agriculture, trade, and travel. However, little is known about how to achieve this and the challenges and gaps of interagency collaboration. I conducted a systematic literature review to synthesize the evidence. Conducted across four databases that included seven studies in the final review, Covidence™ categorized the data based on the research questions.

The seven studies included collaborations for MERS-CoV in South Korea; COVID-19 in the United States; and Influenza in China. Overall, they reported enabling or inhibiting factors for collaboration during public health emergencies in six domains: agreements and guidelines; communication; resources and capacity; leadership and governance; trust, relationship, and culture; and monitoring and evaluation. These domains reflect key challenges for interagency collaboration (e.g., lack of integrated or interoperable information systems among agencies, unclear collaboration policies, poor communication among agencies, and different work cultures).

The benefits of collaboration are critical to global health security because one national-level agency cannot tackle public health threats. Understanding how agencies work and can work together is vital. The proper knowledge and tools to help form and strengthen interagency collaboration can support national-level prevention, detection, and response to future health crises.

Table of Contents

List of Abbreviations i

Chapter 1. Introduction 1

Chapter 2. Literature review 4

Chapter 3. Methodology 12

Chapter 4. Results 18

Chapter 5. Discussion 30

References 37

List of Tables

Table 1. Inclusion and Exclusion Criteria for the Systematic Review 15

Table 2. Overview of Selected Studies 22

Table 3. Study Assessment 24

Table 4. Risks Associated with Interagency Collaboration 29

List of Figures

Figure 1. SPIDER Structure for Literature Search 12

Figure 2. Flow Chart of Study Selection 19

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