Research on Public Health Emergencies
PHE refer to major infectious diseases, group diseases with unknown causes, significant food or occupational poisoning, and other events that may cause or have already caused severe harm to public health (2). Internationally, it is usually defined as an event that poses a serious risk to global public health, which may cross national borders, need to coordinate international response measures, and may have a serious impact on all parts of the world (3). In the past decades, outbreaks of several diseases such as SARS, Ebola virus, Zika virus, COVID-19, etc. have been declared as Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) by the WHO. In China, scholars have conducted in-depth research on public health emergencies response since the outbreak of SARS. This research mainly includes three aspects: conceptual definition, capacity building, and policy research. In the field of conceptual definition, Chinese scholars have summarized the concept of public health emergencies from the perspectives of their characteristics, nature, and classification (4,6). In the field of emergency capacity building, Chinese research has mainly focused on public health emergency systems and mechanisms, information system construction, media response, and crisis public relations, including current situations, issues, and countermeasures (7–12). In the field of policy research, studies have analyzed the content of policies for response to public health emergencies (13,14), the evolution of policy themes (15,17), policy evaluation (18,19), policy system improvement (20,21), policy comparison and reference (22,23), and other aspects. From a research perspective, policy analysis can be divided into policy development analysis (24), policy implementation (25), and policy improvement (26), with diverse analytical methods, including content analysis (27), comparative analysis (28), and mathematical modeling analysis (29). Research on PHE internationally originated from a series of consecutive PHE that occurred after the “9.11” terrorist attacks in the United States. Scholars began to conduct comprehensive research on PHE, combining multiple disciplines such as sociology, psychology, and economics. This includes understanding the nature and concept of public health emergencies (30), innovation research on system mechanisms (31), theoretical and methodological research (32), and more.
Research on Policy Evaluation
Policy evaluation refers to the systematic measurement and judgment of the effectiveness of policy interventions and implementation using scientific evaluation criteria and methods. It comprehensively examines, analyzes, judges, and summarizes the entire policy system and process, which is the fundamental path to understanding the spiritual value demands of policies and an important guarantee for actively implementing policies and improving their implementation efficiency (33,34). According to German scholar Wollmann, the classic policy evaluation method reveals the causal mechanism of policies to judge their success and failure, advantages and disadvantages, and various impacts on society (35). Before the 1970s, policy evaluation methods were mainly empirical-based, emphasizing the use of social experiments and mathematical analysis. Afterwards, scholars gradually focused on the normative-based methodology of value judgment. The most well-known are Bigman's five evaluation methods and Poland's “Three E”evaluation (36,37). Currently, commonly used policy evaluation methods or framework models include analytic hierarchy process, BP neural network evaluation method, fuzzy comprehensive evaluation method, propensity score matching-double difference (PSM-DID) method, grey relational model, dynamic CGE model, etc. The evaluation content is diversified, involving agricultural economy, finance, science and technology, medical care, environment, sustainable development and other fields.
To sum up, existing research has analyzed the main issues of public health emergencies response, but there are also shortcomings: (1) The research object is limited. Most studies analyze the PHERPs from a certain region or field, but the overall research focusing on the emergency response policies at the central and local government levels is lacking. The holistic study can systematically and comprehensively analyze the development status of emergency response policies, and facilitate the discovery of practical problems in the process of policy operation. (2) The research perspective is relatively single. Most existing research is based on tracking the implementation and execution process of policies, and there are few studies on analyzing the formulation of emergency response policies. The analysis of policy-making links can reveal the basic characteristics of policies in depth and facilitate the elaboration of the deep laws contained in the content of policy texts. (3) The research method is simple, mainly focusing on qualitative analysis and pure quantitative description, with little utilization of systematic evaluation methods. Therefore, there is a need to deepen the evaluation of emergency response policies and update the research content and methods accordingly.
This study combines content analysis methods of policy texts with the Policy Modeling Consistency (PMC) index model to analyze and evaluate PHERPs. Compared with other quantitative evaluation models, PMC index model has the following advantages: (1)it focuses on the policy texts themselves, effectively addressing the lack of attention in quantitative policy research; (2) it can quantitatively evaluate not only individual policies but also multiple policies for comparative analysis, and through the PMC surface graph, can intuitively demonstrate the strengths and weaknesses of various policies, providing a more scientific and effective pathway for improvement; (3) it provides a low-cost and easily operable method for quantitatively evaluating policies (38). Currently, internationally, the PMC index model has been widely applied in the evaluation of policies on land conservation (39), fishery insurance (40), long-term care insurance (41), and the pork industry (42). China scholars have applied it to the evaluation of innovation policies of the State Council (43), regional technological innovation policies (44), artificial intelligence policies (45), education policies (46), and elderly care policies (47).
These studies further demonstrate that using the PMC index model to evaluate China's PHERPs is feasible and meaningful. Therefore, based on the above analysis, this article uses the PMC index model from the perspective of text content analysis, selects relevant policy texts of emergency response policies from 2003 to 2019 for quantitative research. The significance of this study lies in designing an evaluation system based on the characteristics of public health emergencies and the adaptability of the PMC index model, and obtaining scientifically reliable quantitative evaluation results. Based on the findings of the policy evaluation, this study analyses the strengths and weaknesses of China's PHERPs in addressing public health crises. Subsequently, it proposes countermeasures to optimize PHERPs, with the aim of enhancing the resilience of the overall emergency response policy system.