Quantitative Evaluation of China’s Public Health Emergencies Response Policies：A PMC index model approach

Abstract

Background Public health emergencies response polices (PHERPs) provide a basis and institutional guarantee for the implementation of emergency response work. At present, China has made certain achievements in emergency response for public health emergencies (PHE). In order to further improve the emergency response capability, it is necessary to conduct a systematic analysis of relevant policies, understand their content and role, and clarify directions for policy improvement.Methods Based on 33 comprehensive public health emergencies response policies (PHERPs) released by the central level of China from 2003 to 2019, text mining and content analysis were used to construct a PMC index model with 10 first-lever and 46 second-level variables. The policies were quantitatively evaluated to analyze their strengths and weaknesses.Results In this study, finds that the average PMC index value for the 33 policies was 6.43, with an average rating of acceptable. Among them, 10 policies were rated as excellent, 23 policies were rated as acceptable, and there were no poor policies. For the first-level variables, the mean scores for policy openness, policy structure, policy area, policy focus, and policy nature were relatively high, at 1.00, 0.88, 0.87, 0.85, and 0.86, respectively. However, the scores for policy timeliness, policy issuing agency, incentive measures, policy target, and policy function were relatively low, at 0.25, 0.27, 0.41, 0.54, and 0.50, respectively, which need to be given more attention.Conclusions In this study, we also emphasized that the use of the PMC index model policy evaluation method in researching policies related to emergency response to PHE is relatively rare. These findings contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of PHERPs, and provide a reference for further research.