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

Andrew Joyce (), Emma Risely, Celia Green, Gemma Carey and Fiona Buick
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Andrew Joyce: Centre for Social Impact, Swinburne University of Technology, Hawthorn 3122, Australia
Emma Risely: Centre for Social Impact, Swinburne University of Technology, Hawthorn 3122, Australia
Celia Green: Centre for Social Impact, University of New South Wales, Sydney 2052, Australia
Gemma Carey: Centre for Social Impact, University of New South Wales, Sydney 2052, Australia
Fiona Buick: School of Business, University of New South Wales, Canberra 2612, Australia

IJERPH, 2023, vol. 21, issue 1, 1-11

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 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
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