What Can Public Health Administration Learn from the Decision-Making Processes during COVID-19?

Joyce, Andrew; Risely, Emma; Green, Celia; Carey, Gemma; Buick, Fiona

doi:10.3390/ijerph21010004

Open AccessReview

What Can Public Health Administration Learn from the Decision-Making Processes during COVID-19?

by

Andrew Joyce

^1,*,

Emma Risely

¹

,

Celia Green

²,

Gemma Carey

² and

Fiona Buick

³

¹

Centre for Social Impact, Swinburne University of Technology, Hawthorn 3122, Australia

²

Centre for Social Impact, University of New South Wales, Sydney 2052, Australia

³

School of Business, University of New South Wales, Canberra 2612, Australia

^*

Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.

Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2024, 21(1), 4; https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph21010004

Submission received: 7 November 2023 / Revised: 8 December 2023 / Accepted: 18 December 2023 / Published: 20 December 2023

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Abstract

Human decision-making is prone to biases and the use of heuristics that can result in making logical errors and erroneous causal connections, which were evident during COVID-19 policy developments and potentially contributed to the inadequate and costly responses to COVID-19. There are decision-making frameworks and tools that can improve organisational decision-making. It is currently unknown as to what extent public health administrations have been using these structured organisational-level decision-making processes to counter decision-making biases. Current reviews of COVID-19 policies could examine not just the content of policy decisions but also how decisions were made. We recommend that understanding whether these decision-making processes have been used in public health administration is key to policy reform and learning from the COVID-19 pandemic. This is a research and practice gap that has significant implications for a wide range of public health policy areas and potentially could have made a profound difference in COVID-19-related policy responses.

Keywords: decision-making processes; COVID-19; public health; administration; organisational capacity

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MDPI and ACS Style

Joyce, A.; Risely, E.; Green, C.; Carey, G.; Buick, F. What Can Public Health Administration Learn from the Decision-Making Processes during COVID-19? Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2024, 21, 4. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph21010004

AMA Style

Joyce A, Risely E, Green C, Carey G, Buick F. What Can Public Health Administration Learn from the Decision-Making Processes during COVID-19? International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. 2024; 21(1):4. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph21010004

Chicago/Turabian Style

Joyce, Andrew, Emma Risely, Celia Green, Gemma Carey, and Fiona Buick. 2024. "What Can Public Health Administration Learn from the Decision-Making Processes during COVID-19?" International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health 21, no. 1: 4. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph21010004

APA Style

Joyce, A., Risely, E., Green, C., Carey, G., & Buick, F. (2024). What Can Public Health Administration Learn from the Decision-Making Processes during COVID-19? International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 21(1), 4. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph21010004

Note that from the first issue of 2016, this journal uses article numbers instead of page numbers. See further details here.

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What Can Public Health Administration Learn from the Decision-Making Processes during COVID-19?

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