Biodefense and Emergency Use Authorization: Different Originations, Purposes, and Evolutionary Paths of Institutions in the United States and South Korea

Author(s):  
HyunJung Kim

Abstract Background: Historical institutionalism (HI) determines that institutions have been transformed by a pattern of punctuated evolution due to exogenous shocks. Although scholars frequently emphasize the role of agency - endogenous factors – when it comes to institutional changes, but the HI analytic narratives still remain in the meso-level analysis in the context of structure and agency. This article provides domestic and policy-level accounts of where biodefense institutions of the United States and South Korea come from, seeing through emergency-use-authorization (EUA) policy, and how the EUA policies have evolved by employing the policy-learning concepts through the Event-related Policy Change Model. Results: By employing the Birkland’s model, this article complements the limitation of the meso-level analysis in addressing that the 2001 Amerithrax and the 2015 Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) outbreak rooted originations and purposes of the biodefense respectively. Since the crisis, a new post-crisis agenda in society contributed to establishing new domestic coalition, which begin to act as endogenous driving forces that institutionalize new biodefense institutions and even reinforce them through path dependent way when the institutions evolved. Therefore, EUA policy cores (Post-Exposure Prophylaxis (PEP) in the United States and Non-Pharmaceutical Intervention (NPI) in South Korea keep strengthened during the policy revisions. Conclusions: The United States and South Korea have different originations and purposes of biodefense, which are institutions evolving through self-reinforce dependent way based on the lessons learned from past crises. In sum, under the homeland security biodefense institution, the US EUA focuses on the development of specialized, unlicensed PEP in response to public health emergencies; on the other hand, under the disease containment-centric biodefense institution, the Korean EUA is specialized to conduct NPI missions in response to public health emergencies.

2022 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lijin Xiang ◽  
Shiqun Ma ◽  
Lu Yu ◽  
Wenhao Wang ◽  
Zhichao Yin

The COVID-19 infections have profoundly and negatively impacted the whole world. Hence, we have modeled the dynamic spread of global COVID-19 infections with the connectedness approach based on the TVP-VAR model, using the data of confirmed COVID-19 cases during the period of March 23rd, 2020 to September 10th, 2021 in 18 countries. The results imply that, (i) the United States, the United Kingdom and Indonesia are global epidemic centers, among which the United States has the highest degree of the contagion of the COVID-19 infections, which is stable. South Korea, France and Italy are the main receiver of the contagion of the COVID-19 infections, and South Korea has been the most severely affected by the overseas epidemic; (ii) there is a negative correlation between the timeliness, effectiveness and mandatory nature of government policies and the risk of the associated countries COVID-19 epidemic affecting, as well as the magnitude of the net contagion of domestic COVID-19; (iii) the severity of domestic COVID-19 epidemics in the United States and Canada, Canada and Mexico, Indonesia and Canada is almost equivalent, especially for the United States, Canada and Mexico, whose domestic epidemics are with the same tendency; (iv) the COVID-19 epidemic has spread though not only the central divergence manner and chain mode of transmission, but also the way of feedback loop. Thus, more efforts should be made by the governments to enhance the pertinence and compulsion of their epidemic prevention policies and establish a systematic and efficient risk assessment mechanism for public health emergencies.


2020 ◽  
Vol 21 (1_suppl) ◽  
pp. 110S-117S
Author(s):  
Kristen E. Ortega ◽  
Holly Mata

Tobacco use remains the single most preventable cause of disease, disability, and death in the United States. Almost 500,000 people die every year in the United States because of tobacco use; approximately one in eight of those deaths are attributable to secondhand smoke exposure. Significant disparities exist in terms of which groups bear the greatest burden of tobacco-related illness and mortality. Reducing tobacco use and exposure in groups most affected and most at risk is a national public health priority. Tobacco control advocates can promote health equity by prioritizing policies that are likely to decrease tobacco use and secondhand smoke exposure and improve access to tobacco cessation resources among populations most at risk for tobacco-related disparities, including people who live in subsidized multiunit housing. In this article, we share the context, process, key milestones, and lessons learned as stakeholders in El Paso, Texas explored and implemented smoke-free policy in subsidized public housing. Partners including the local housing authority, a nonprofit health foundation, the local public health department, and a local university facilitated a thoughtful and community-engaged process that acknowledged the right of residents to breathe clean air in their own homes, potential challenges residents who choose to smoke may face in adapting to smoke-free policy, and the need for support for those who choose to quit. We conclude with five key lessons learned and share resources for other communities, health professionals, and coalitions advocating for and supporting smoke-free housing policy in their communities.


2020 ◽  
Vol 70 (Supplement_1) ◽  
pp. S27-S29
Author(s):  
Dana Meaney-Delman ◽  
Nadia L Oussayef ◽  
Margaret A Honein ◽  
Christina A Nelson

Abstract Pregnant women are an important at-risk population to consider during public health emergencies. These women, like nonpregnant adults, may be faced with the risk of acquiring life-threatening infections during outbreaks or bioterrorism (BT) events and, in some cases, can experience increased severity of infection and higher morbidity compared with nonpregnant adults. Yersinia pestis, the bacterium that causes plague, is a highly pathogenic organism. There are 4 million births annually in the United States, and thus the unique needs of pregnant women and their infants should be considered in pre-event planning for a plague outbreak or BT event.


Author(s):  
Lida Safarnejad ◽  
Qian Xu ◽  
Yaorong Ge ◽  
Arunkumar Bagavathi ◽  
Siddharth Krishnan ◽  
...  

BACKGROUND Social media has become a major resource for observing and understanding public opinions using infodemiology and infoveillance methods, especially during emergencies such as disease outbreaks. For public health agencies, understanding the driving forces of web-based discussions will help deliver more effective and efficient information to general users on social media and the web. OBJECTIVE The study aimed to identify the major contributors that drove overall Zika-related tweeting dynamics during the 2016 epidemic. In total, 3 hypothetical drivers were proposed: (1) the underlying Zika epidemic quantified as a time series of case counts; (2) sporadic but critical real-world events such as the 2016 Rio Olympics and World Health Organization’s Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) announcement, and (3) a few influential users’ tweeting activities. METHODS All tweets and retweets (RTs) containing the keyword Zika posted in 2016 were collected via the Gnip application programming interface (API). We developed an analytical pipeline, EventPeriscope, to identify co-occurring trending events with Zika and quantify the strength of these events. We also retrieved Zika case data and identified the top influencers of the Zika discussion on Twitter. The influence of 3 potential drivers was examined via a multivariate time series analysis, signal processing, a content analysis, and text mining techniques. RESULTS Zika-related tweeting dynamics were not significantly correlated with the underlying Zika epidemic in the United States in any of the four quarters in 2016 nor in the entire year. Instead, peaks of Zika-related tweeting activity were strongly associated with a few critical real-world events, both planned, such as the Rio Olympics, and unplanned, such as the PHEIC announcement. The Rio Olympics was mentioned in >15% of all Zika-related tweets and PHEIC occurred in 27% of Zika-related tweets around their respective peaks. In addition, the overall tweeting dynamics of the top 100 most actively tweeting users on the Zika topic, the top 100 users receiving most RTs, and the top 100 users mentioned were the most highly correlated to and preceded the overall tweeting dynamics, making these groups of users the potential drivers of tweeting dynamics. The top 100 users who retweeted the most were not critical in driving the overall tweeting dynamics. There were very few overlaps among these different groups of potentially influential users. CONCLUSIONS Using our proposed analytical workflow, EventPeriscope, we identified that Zika discussion dynamics on Twitter were decoupled from the actual disease epidemic in the United States but were closely related to and highly influenced by certain sporadic real-world events as well as by a few influential users. This study provided a methodology framework and insights to better understand the driving forces of web-based public discourse during health emergencies. Therefore, health agencies could deliver more effective and efficient web-based communications in emerging crises.


Author(s):  
Cheryl A. Levine ◽  
Daire R. Jansson

Abstract Public health emergencies, including the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, highlight disproportionate impacts faced by populations with existing disparities. Concepts and terms used to describe populations disproportionately impacted in emergencies vary over time and across disciplines, but United States (U.S.) federal guidance and law require equal access to our nation’s emergency resources. At all levels of emergency planning, public health and their partners must be accountable to populations with existing inequities, which requires a conceptual shift towards using the data-driven social determinants of health (SDOH). SDOH are conditions in which people are born, live, learn, work, play, worship, and age that affect a wide range of health, functioning, and quality of life outcomes and risks. This article reviews the historic use of concepts and terms to describe populations disproportionately impacted by emergencies. It also recommends a shift in emergency activities towards interventions that target the SDOH to adequately address long-standing systemic health disparities and socioeconomic inequities in the U.S.


2020 ◽  
Vol 50 (6-7) ◽  
pp. 568-576
Author(s):  
H. Daniel Xu ◽  
Rashmita Basu

The unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic has already caused enormous economic and human life losses in the United States and it is still ravaging the country. In this article, the authors argue that the pandemic has exposed key issues of concern in several areas of the American government system ranging from federalist intergovernmental relations to public health system and to health care policy. These issues of concern include the strained federal-state relations in emergency management, inadequate data collection and data reporting for disease surveillance and control, politicization and diminished role of science and evidence in administrative decision making, and underinvestment in public health programs especially in minority health. Based on their analysis, the authors admonish that it is critically important for the U.S. government to learn from the failed response to the pandemic and offer several recommendations for improving its response to future public health emergencies and research in public administration.


Author(s):  
Jing Liu ◽  
Yujie Wang ◽  
Qian Zhang ◽  
Jianxiang Wei ◽  
Haihua Zhou

The purpose of this paper is to summarize the research hotspots and frontiers in the field of public health emergencies (PHE) between 1994–2020 through the scientometric analysis method. In total, 2247 literature works retrieved from the Web of Science core database were analyzed by CiteSpace software, and the results were displayed in knowledge mapping. The overall characteristics analysis showed that the number of publications and authors in the field of PHE kept an upward trend during the past decades, and the United States was in the leading position, followed by China and England. Switzerland has the highest central value and plays an important intermediary role in promoting the integration and exchange of international PHE research achievements. The keyword co-occurrence analysis indicated that COVID-19 was the most high-frequency keyword in this field, and there had been no new keywords for a long time until the outbreak of COVID-19 in 2019. The burst detection analysis showed that the top five burst keywords in terms of burst intensity were zika virus, Ebola, United States, emergency preparedness and microcephaly. The results indicated that the research theme of PHE is closely related to the major infectious diseases in a specific period. It will continue to develop with more attention paid to public health. The conclusions can provide help and reference for the PHE potential researchers.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 62-81
Author(s):  
Benjamin Zeller

New religious movements (NRMs) have responded to the COVID-19 pandemic in diverse ways, ranging from closely following mainstream public health recommendations to explicit rejection of such guidance. This article considers the manner in which NRMs have responded to the pandemic through analysis of groups’ ideological alignment with their host societies’ cultural and social frames. Extending the Bromley–Melton (2012) model of social alignment and the Rochford (2018) approach of frame alignment, the response of these NRMs must be contextualized in regard to alignment with broader social frames. The article considers specific cases of NRMs in South Korea, India, and the United States and posits that no single model can encompass NRM responses to the pandemic, but that multiple social factors provide guidance for understanding why and how NRMs responded to the COVID-19 pandemic.


10.2196/17175 ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. e17175
Author(s):  
Lida Safarnejad ◽  
Qian Xu ◽  
Yaorong Ge ◽  
Arunkumar Bagavathi ◽  
Siddharth Krishnan ◽  
...  

Background Social media has become a major resource for observing and understanding public opinions using infodemiology and infoveillance methods, especially during emergencies such as disease outbreaks. For public health agencies, understanding the driving forces of web-based discussions will help deliver more effective and efficient information to general users on social media and the web. Objective The study aimed to identify the major contributors that drove overall Zika-related tweeting dynamics during the 2016 epidemic. In total, 3 hypothetical drivers were proposed: (1) the underlying Zika epidemic quantified as a time series of case counts; (2) sporadic but critical real-world events such as the 2016 Rio Olympics and World Health Organization’s Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) announcement, and (3) a few influential users’ tweeting activities. Methods All tweets and retweets (RTs) containing the keyword Zika posted in 2016 were collected via the Gnip application programming interface (API). We developed an analytical pipeline, EventPeriscope, to identify co-occurring trending events with Zika and quantify the strength of these events. We also retrieved Zika case data and identified the top influencers of the Zika discussion on Twitter. The influence of 3 potential drivers was examined via a multivariate time series analysis, signal processing, a content analysis, and text mining techniques. Results Zika-related tweeting dynamics were not significantly correlated with the underlying Zika epidemic in the United States in any of the four quarters in 2016 nor in the entire year. Instead, peaks of Zika-related tweeting activity were strongly associated with a few critical real-world events, both planned, such as the Rio Olympics, and unplanned, such as the PHEIC announcement. The Rio Olympics was mentioned in >15% of all Zika-related tweets and PHEIC occurred in 27% of Zika-related tweets around their respective peaks. In addition, the overall tweeting dynamics of the top 100 most actively tweeting users on the Zika topic, the top 100 users receiving most RTs, and the top 100 users mentioned were the most highly correlated to and preceded the overall tweeting dynamics, making these groups of users the potential drivers of tweeting dynamics. The top 100 users who retweeted the most were not critical in driving the overall tweeting dynamics. There were very few overlaps among these different groups of potentially influential users. Conclusions Using our proposed analytical workflow, EventPeriscope, we identified that Zika discussion dynamics on Twitter were decoupled from the actual disease epidemic in the United States but were closely related to and highly influenced by certain sporadic real-world events as well as by a few influential users. This study provided a methodology framework and insights to better understand the driving forces of web-based public discourse during health emergencies. Therefore, health agencies could deliver more effective and efficient web-based communications in emerging crises.


Author(s):  
Elise D Riley ◽  
Matthew D Hickey ◽  
Elizabeth Imbert ◽  
Angelo A Clemenzi-Allen ◽  
Monica Gandhi

Abstract Job loss and evictions tied to the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic are expected to increase homelessness significantly in the coming months. Reciprocally, homelessness and the many vulnerabilities that inevitably accompany it are driving COVID-19 outbreaks in US shelters and other congregate living situations. Unless we intervene to address homelessness, these co-existing and synergistic situations will make the current public health crisis even worse. Preventing homelessness and providing permanent affordable housing has reduced the ravages of the HIV epidemic. We must take the lessons learned in 40 years of fighting HIV to respond effectively to the COVID-19 crisis. Housing is an investment that will curb the spread of COVID-19 and help protect all of us from future pandemics.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document