Appropriate governance responses to infectious disease threats:Developing working hypotheses

Infectious diseases remain a threat to public health in today's interconnected world. There is an ongoing debate on how responses to threats of infectious diseases can best be coordinated, and the field remains nascent in understanding which specific structural governance arrangement will perform best. The present paper contributes to this discussion by demonstrating that it is possible to develop working hypotheses specifying the relationship between the type of infectious disease crisis and type of response to the crisis. For type of crises and type of response mechanisms there is still a lack of research, but the hypothesis combining these two provide a perspective for a future research and action agenda. It certainly prevents us from choosing between schism or hypes when it comes to crisis response. It provides instruments to realize that no single type of response is the most effective and that not all responses are equally effective in a concrete case

Stakeholder Involvement in Outbreak Management: To Fear or Not to Fear?

Infectious diseases remain a threat to public health, requiring the coordinated action of many stakeholders. Little has been written about stakeholder participation and approaches to sharing information, in dynamic contexts and under time pressure as is the case for infectious disease outbreaks. Communicable-disease specialists fear that delays in implementing control measures may occur if stakeholders are not included in the outbreak-management process. Two case studies described in this article show how the needs of stakeholders may vary with time and that early sharing of information takes priority over shared decision-making. The stakeholders itemized their needs and potential contributions in order to arrive at the collective interest of outbreak management. For this, the results suggest the potential for improvement through development of “network governance” including the effective sharing of information in large networks with varying needs. Outbreaks in which conflicting perceptions may occur among the stakeholders require particular attention

Ebola Preparedness in the Netherlands: The Need for Coordination Between the Public Health and the Curative Sector.

During the Ebola outbreak in West Africa in 2014-2015, close cooperation between the curative sector and the public health sector in the Netherlands was necessary for timely identification, referral, and investigation of patients with suspected Ebola virus disease (EVD)

Knowledge, perceptions and media use of the Dutch general public and healthcare workers regarding Ebola, 2014.

The Ebola outbreak in West-Africa triggered risk communication activities to promote adequate preventive behaviour in the Netherlands. Our study investigated the level of knowledge, perceptions, and media use regarding Ebola