Quantitative analysis on supportive policy documents for risk prevention and mitigation of public health emergency based on policy instruments-oriented content

  Objective  To explore key points and disadvantages of the policy instruments and provide reference for the optimization of policies related to public health emergency, the supportive policy documents issued by China Central Government and its ministries (commission) were analyzed.

  Methods  The supportive policy documents related to public health emergency issued from January 1985 to May 2020 were collected from official websites and databases, based on risk management model and policy tools, the two-dimensional framework was constructed by using content analysis, and qualitative software Nvivo12 was used to extract contents of 96 texts related for unit analysis.

  Results  Among the 96 policy documents collected, 72.92% were issued by single ministry/commission, of which, the documents by State Council accounted for the largest proportion of 23.96%. In different types of support policy documents, notifications accounted for the largest proportion of 66.67%. Among 1290 policy tools, environment-oriented policy tools accounted for 49.22%, followed by supply-oriented policy tools (45.81%), and demand-oriented policy tools (4.96%). In risk management dimension, the policy tools for prevention stag accounted for 67.44%, followed by the policy tools for response stage (26.74%), and the policy tools for post stage (5.82%). In dimensions of policy tools and risk management, environment-oriented policy tools accounted for 33.64%, 12.33%, 3.26% at three stages; supply-oriented policy tools accounted for 31.86%, 11.64% and 2.33%; and demand-oriented policy tools accounted for 1.94%, 2.79% and 0.23%.

  Conclusion  Environment-oriented and supply-oriented policy tools were mainly used to support risk prevention and mitigation of public health emergencies, while demand-oriented policy tools were obviously insufficient. In China, more attentions have been paid to the environment-oriented and supply-oriented policy tools to support the prevention of public health emergencies in prevention stage compared with the mitigation of public health emergency in post stage. It is suggested to strengthen the development of support policy tools in post stage to improve communication, leadership, personnel and material support, and infrastructure construction.