Toward a Post-Pandemic World: Lessons from Covid-19 for Now and the Future: Proceedings of a Workshop

Toward a Post-Pandemic World: Lessons from Covid-19 for Now and the Future: Proceedings of a Workshop

Author: National Academies Of Sciences Engineeri

Publisher: National Academies Press

Published: 2023-02-11

Total Pages:

ISBN-13: 9780309688406

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To take stock of lessons learned from COVID-19 around the world and in the United States, the Forum on Microbial Threats held two virtual workshops during 2021. The first workshop focused on what it means to frame the response to COVID-19 through a syndemic approach, and what the implications would be for global recovery. The second workshop focused more broadly on key lessons and emerging data from ongoing pandemic response efforts that can be incorporated into current health systems to improve resilience and preparedness for future outbreaks. This workshop explored the long-term effects of COVID-19 on health equity, including considerations for mental health and social determinants of health. It also addressed uncertainties during a pandemic, such as trust, communication, and engagement and explored approaches to systematize recovery efforts to improve the ongoing responses and prepare for the next pandemic. Experts discussed possibilities for a post-pandemic world and a response strategy for stakeholders that ensures sustained community partnerships and prioritization of health equity. This Proceedings of a Workshop summarizes the presentations and discussions from the second workshop.


Respiratory pathogen pandemic preparedness: lessons identified from the global response to COVID-19

Respiratory pathogen pandemic preparedness: lessons identified from the global response to COVID-19

Author: World Health Organization

Publisher: World Health Organization

Published: 2024-03-06

Total Pages: 52

ISBN-13: 9240086536

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A scoping literature review of learnings from the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic was commissioned by WHO to inform operational priorities for future respiratory pathogen pandemic preparedness. The learnings are grouped according to WHO’s subsystems for health emergency preparedness, response and resilience. Key takeaway messages include: 1) Preparedness works; 2) Health is everyone’s business; 3) No one is safe until everyone is safe; and 4) Response must be agile and adaptive. The review will support pandemic planners at all levels to develop and update preparedness and response plans.


Public Health, Public Trust and American Fragility in a Pandemic Era

Public Health, Public Trust and American Fragility in a Pandemic Era

Author: Norbert Goldfield

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2023-09-20

Total Pages: 209

ISBN-13: 1000935701

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This book explores how professionals and policymakers in mental and physical health care can use lessons from the COVID pandemic to better inform future public policy and treatment. Using the United States as a test case, Norbert Goldfield draws on his professional experience in healthcare and policy-making to explore how some societies have emerged from the pandemic with increasing internal conflicts. The author uses excerpts from his own COVID diary to revisit key stages in the response to the COVID pandemic to highlight where division has entered the publish health discourse, and to set out an alternative vision of how mental and physical health can be framed professionally and publicly. In addition to this account, Dr Goldfield details how our political system should change with respect to pandemics and how health professionals, together with the lay public, can help. Specifically, the book highlights the three critical issues confronting American pandemic fragility: increasing vaccinations, decreasing misinformation, and fostering greater linkages between our public and acute health systems. This book will be invaluable for all types of health care professionals, both in mental and physical health arenas, lay people interested in the pandemic, and for policymakers.


Meeting Regional Stemm Workforce Needs in the Wake of Covid-19

Meeting Regional Stemm Workforce Needs in the Wake of Covid-19

Author: National Academies of Sciences Engineering and Medicine

Publisher:

Published: 2021-07-23

Total Pages:

ISBN-13: 9780309256285

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The COVID-19 pandemic is transforming the global economy and significantly shifting workforce demand, requiring quick, adaptive responses. The pandemic has revealed the vulnerabilities of many organizations and regional economies, and it has accelerated trends that could lead to significant improvements in productivity, performance, and resilience, which will enable organizations and regions to thrive in the next normal. To explore how communities around the United States are addressing workforce issues laid bare by the COVID-19 pandemic and how they are taking advantage of local opportunities to expand their science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and medicine (STEMM) workforces to position them for success going forward, the Board of Higher Education and Workforce of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine convened a series of workshops to identify immediate and near-term regional STEMM workforce needs in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. The workshop planning committee identified five U.S. cities and their associated metropolitan areas - Birmingham, Alabama; Boston, Massachusetts; Richmond, Virginia; Riverside, California; and Wichita, Kansas - to host workshops highlighting promising practices that communities can use to respond urgently and appropriately to their STEMM workforce needs. A sixth workshop discussed how the lessons learned during the five region-focused workshops could be applied in other communities to meet STEMM workforce needs. This proceedings of a virtual workshop series summarizes the presentations and discussions from the six public workshops that made up the virtual workshop series and highlights the key points raised during the presentations, moderated panel discussions and deliberations, and open discussions among the workshop participants.


The Critical Public Health Value of Vaccines

The Critical Public Health Value of Vaccines

Author: National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine

Publisher:

Published: 2022-01-29

Total Pages: 230

ISBN-13: 9780309461566

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Immunization against disease is among the most successful global health efforts of the modern era, and substantial gains in vaccination coverage rates have been achieved worldwide. However, that progress has stagnated in recent years, leaving an estimated 20 million children worldwide either undervaccinated or completely unvaccinated. The determinants of vaccination uptake are complex, mutable, and context specific. A primary driver is vaccine hesitancy - defined as a "delay in acceptance or refusal of vaccines despite availability of vaccination services". The majority of vaccine-hesitant people fall somewhere on a spectrum from vaccine acceptance to vaccine denial. Vaccine uptake is also hampered by socioeconomic or structural barriers to access. On August 17-20, 2020, the Forum on Microbial Threats at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine held a 4-day virtual workshop titled The Critical Public Health Value of Vaccines: Tackling Issues of Access and Hesitancy. The workshop focused on two main areas (vaccine access and vaccine confidence) and gave particular consideration to health systems, research opportunities, communication strategies, and policies that could be considered to address access, perception, attitudes, and behaviors toward vaccination. This publication summarizes the presentations and discussion of the workshop.


Systematizing the One Health Approach in Preparedness and Response Efforts for Infectious Disease Outbreaks: Proceedings of a Workshop

Systematizing the One Health Approach in Preparedness and Response Efforts for Infectious Disease Outbreaks: Proceedings of a Workshop

Author: National Academies Of Sciences Engineeri

Publisher: National Academies Press

Published: 2022-10-11

Total Pages:

ISBN-13: 9780309093378

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On February 23-25, 2021, a planning committee convened by the Forum on Microbial Threats at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine held a 3-day virtual workshop titled Systematizing the One Health Approach in Preparedness and Response Efforts for Infectious Disease Outbreaks. The workshop gave particular consideration to research opportunities, multisectoral collaboration mechanisms, community-engagement strategies, educational opportunities, and policies that speakers have found effective in implementing the core capacities and interventions of One Health principles to strengthen national health systems and enhance global health security. This publication summarizes the presentation and discussion of the workshop.


Potential Risks and Benefits of Gain-of-Function Research

Potential Risks and Benefits of Gain-of-Function Research

Author: National Research Council

Publisher: National Academies Press

Published: 2015-04-13

Total Pages: 131

ISBN-13: 0309367867

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On October 17, 2014, spurred by incidents at U.S. government laboratories that raised serious biosafety concerns, the United States government launched a one-year deliberative process to address the continuing controversy surrounding so-called "gain-of-function" (GOF) research on respiratory pathogens with pandemic potential. The gain of function controversy began in late 2011 with the question of whether to publish the results of two experiments involving H5N1 avian influenza and continued to focus on certain research with highly pathogenic avian influenza over the next three years. The heart of the U.S. process is an evaluation of the potential risks and benefits of certain types of GOF experiments with influenza, SARS, and MERS viruses that would inform the development and adoption of a new U.S. Government policy governing the funding and conduct of GOF research. Potential Risks and Benefits of Gain-of-Function Research is the summary of a two-day public symposia on GOF research. Convened in December 2014 by the Institute of Medicine and the National Research Council, the main focus of this event was to discuss principles important for, and key considerations in, the design of risk and benefit assessments of GOF research. Participants examined the underlying scientific and technical questions that are the source of current discussion and debate over GOF research involving pathogens with pandemic potential. This report is a record of the presentations and discussion of the meeting.


Cybersecurity in the COVID-19 Pandemic

Cybersecurity in the COVID-19 Pandemic

Author: Kenneth Okereafor

Publisher: CRC Press

Published: 2021-03-17

Total Pages: 168

ISBN-13: 1000357570

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As the 2020 global lockdown became a universal strategy to control the COVID-19 pandemic, social distancing triggered a massive reliance on online and cyberspace alternatives and switched the world to the digital economy. Despite their effectiveness for remote work and online interactions, cyberspace alternatives ignited several Cybersecurity challenges. Malicious hackers capitalized on global anxiety and launched cyberattacks against unsuspecting victims. Internet fraudsters exploited human and system vulnerabilities and impacted data integrity, privacy, and digital behaviour. Cybersecurity in the COVID-19 Pandemic demystifies Cybersecurity concepts using real-world cybercrime incidents from the pandemic to illustrate how threat actors perpetrated computer fraud against valuable information assets particularly healthcare, financial, commercial, travel, academic, and social networking data. The book simplifies the socio-technical aspects of Cybersecurity and draws valuable lessons from the impacts COVID-19 cyberattacks exerted on computer networks, online portals, and databases. The book also predicts the fusion of Cybersecurity into Artificial Intelligence and Big Data Analytics, the two emerging domains that will potentially dominate and redefine post-pandemic Cybersecurity research and innovations between 2021 and 2025. The book’s primary audience is individual and corporate cyberspace consumers across all professions intending to update their Cybersecurity knowledge for detecting, preventing, responding to, and recovering from computer crimes. Cybersecurity in the COVID-19 Pandemic is ideal for information officers, data managers, business and risk administrators, technology scholars, Cybersecurity experts and researchers, and information technology practitioners. Readers will draw lessons for protecting their digital assets from email phishing fraud, social engineering scams, malware campaigns, and website hijacks.


Evidence-Based Practice for Public Health Emergency Preparedness and Response

Evidence-Based Practice for Public Health Emergency Preparedness and Response

Author: National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine

Publisher: National Academies Press

Published: 2020-11-28

Total Pages: 501

ISBN-13: 0309670381

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When communities face complex public health emergencies, state local, tribal, and territorial public health agencies must make difficult decisions regarding how to effectively respond. The public health emergency preparedness and response (PHEPR) system, with its multifaceted mission to prevent, protect against, quickly respond to, and recover from public health emergencies, is inherently complex and encompasses policies, organizations, and programs. Since the events of September 11, 2001, the United States has invested billions of dollars and immeasurable amounts of human capital to develop and enhance public health emergency preparedness and infrastructure to respond to a wide range of public health threats, including infectious diseases, natural disasters, and chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear events. Despite the investments in research and the growing body of empirical literature on a range of preparedness and response capabilities and functions, there has been no national-level, comprehensive review and grading of evidence for public health emergency preparedness and response practices comparable to those utilized in medicine and other public health fields. Evidence-Based Practice for Public Health Emergency Preparedness and Response reviews the state of the evidence on PHEPR practices and the improvements necessary to move the field forward and to strengthen the PHEPR system. This publication evaluates PHEPR evidence to understand the balance of benefits and harms of PHEPR practices, with a focus on four main areas of PHEPR: engagement with and training of community-based partners to improve the outcomes of at-risk populations after public health emergencies; activation of a public health emergency operations center; communication of public health alerts and guidance to technical audiences during a public health emergency; and implementation of quarantine to reduce the spread of contagious illness.


The Threat of Pandemic Influenza

The Threat of Pandemic Influenza

Author: Institute of Medicine

Publisher: National Academies Press

Published: 2005-04-09

Total Pages: 431

ISBN-13: 0309095042

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Public health officials and organizations around the world remain on high alert because of increasing concerns about the prospect of an influenza pandemic, which many experts believe to be inevitable. Moreover, recent problems with the availability and strain-specificity of vaccine for annual flu epidemics in some countries and the rise of pandemic strains of avian flu in disparate geographic regions have alarmed experts about the world's ability to prevent or contain a human pandemic. The workshop summary, The Threat of Pandemic Influenza: Are We Ready? addresses these urgent concerns. The report describes what steps the United States and other countries have taken thus far to prepare for the next outbreak of "killer flu." It also looks at gaps in readiness, including hospitals' inability to absorb a surge of patients and many nations' incapacity to monitor and detect flu outbreaks. The report points to the need for international agreements to share flu vaccine and antiviral stockpiles to ensure that the 88 percent of nations that cannot manufacture or stockpile these products have access to them. It chronicles the toll of the H5N1 strain of avian flu currently circulating among poultry in many parts of Asia, which now accounts for the culling of millions of birds and the death of at least 50 persons. And it compares the costs of preparations with the costs of illness and death that could arise during an outbreak.