The Change And Choice Of Policy Tools In Public Health Crisis Response

How to prevent,respond and resolve public health crises arising from major public health emergencies tests the governance level and governance capacity of the government.As the basic means for the government to achieve policy goals,policy tools have played an important role in public health crisis management.The outbreak of novel coronavirus epidemic in late 2019 and early 2020 is a major public health emergency with the fastest spread and the widest range of infections,and has been the most difficult to prevent and control in China since the founding of the People’s Republic in 1949.Both central and local governments at all levels have played an important role in this crisis response.In this thesis,150 policy texts published during the prevention and control of the COVID-19 in S Province in 2020 were taken as the research object,and a two-dimensional analysis framework of "Policy Tools-Crisis Situation" was constructed.The content analysis method is used to analyze the selection and changes of policy tools in S Province during the epidemic prevention and control period by NVivo 12 Plus software.This research adopts the supply-environment-demand policy classification,and by reading the specific policy contents,the supply-based policy tools are refined into seven categories:financial support,material support,personnel coordination,information technology support,public services,resource sharing,and technical regulation.The environmental policy tools are refined into six categories:target planning,management measures,regulatory control,fiscal and tax policies,credit and finance,and encouragement and guidance.And the demand-based policy tools are refined into four categories:traffic control,government assistance,public procurement,and public-private collaboration.According to the development of the domestic epidemic,the crisis situation is divided into four stages.The first stage is the outbreak of the crisis,characterized by rapid containment of the spread of the epidemic.The second stage is the duration of the crisis,characterized by the predominance of epidemic prevention and control and the start of the resumption of work and production.The third stage is the crisis transformation period,characterized by continued epidemic prevention and control,and the full resumption of work and production.The fourth stage is the receding crisis period,characterized by normalized prevention and control and the promotion of employment.The study found that S Province made full use of environmental policy tools,supply-based policy tools and demand-based policy tools in the four stages of epidemic prevention and control,and the use of the three policy tools showed a trend of increasing first and then decreasing.But there are imbalances in the use of all three categories of primary policy tools and 17 categories of secondary policy tools.This research provides a tentative analysis of the logic of policy tool selection in S Province.It argues that there are three main factors that influence policy tool selection and change,namely policy goals,the nature of the problem and the characteristics of the policy tools themselves.Three suggestions are put forward for the government’s public health crisis management.First,the government should improve the system of public health crisis policy tool,pay attention to the combined use of policy tools and promote the optimization and innovation of policy tools.Second,the government should promote the normalized management of public health emergencies and improve the public health emergency management system.Third,the government should promote and improve the use of policy tools with multi-agent participation.