Now Is the Time to Strengthen Government-Academic Data Infrastructures to Jump-Start Future Public Health Crisis Response (Preprint)

Abstract

UNSTRUCTURED Amidst crises of various types, data serve as a crucial resource for situational awareness, expediting actions, and mitigating public anxiety. During public health crises in particular, the significance of rapid data sharing cannot be overstated. In attempts to accelerate COVID-19 pandemic responses, discussions within society and scholarly research have focused on data sharing among healthcare providers, across government departments at different levels, and on an international scale. A lesser-addressed yet equally important approach to sharing data during the COVID-19 pandemic and other crises involves cross-sector collaboration between government entities and academic researchers. In this viewpoint article, we identify and outline documented data sharing challenges in the context of COVID-19 and other public health crises, as well as broader crisis scenarios encompassing natural disasters and humanitarian emergencies. We then argue that government-academic data collaborations have the potential to alleviate these challenges, which should place them at the forefront of future research attention. Specifically, for researchers, data collaborations with government entities should be considered part of the social infrastructure that bolsters their research efforts toward public health crisis response. Looking ahead, we propose a shift from ad-hoc, intermittent collaborations to cultivating robust and enduring partnerships. Thus, we need to move beyond viewing government-academic data interactions as one-time sharing events. Additionally, given the scarcity of scholarly exploration in this domain, we advocate for further investigations into the real-world practices and experiences related to sharing data from government sources with researchers during public health crises.