LIST OF PANELS

The aim of this panel is to investigate and better understand how different health care systems worldwide responded to the coronavirus pandemic and which lessons could be learnt to improve health systems’ resilience in the current ongoing pandemic.

All health care systems had to adapt quickly (and as best as they could) to face the enormous challenges posed by the Coronavirus pandemic, like the capability to deal with COVID patients while keep delivering other healthcare services, the reorganization of hospitals wards, the impact on the healthcare workforce and the coordination between different levels of care and different levels of the health policymaking process.

Despite facing similar challenges, health care systems around the world put in place different strategies and approaches to face the pandemic and to avoid being overwhelmed.

While there could be different perspectives to investigate health systems responses (epidemiology, medical, etc.) this panel is focused on the ‘policy’ implications of such responses and is aimed at addressing the following questions:

-          How the different institutional settings and the different health systems’ organizational models affected the response to the Coronavirus pandemic?

-          How can we disentangle the relation between health systems, the management of the pandemic and health inequalities?

-          Which key factors allowed some heath systems to get better results in terms of population health outcomes, containment of infections and overall resilience?

This panel will provide public policy scholars from all over the world with the opportunity to investigate, share and discuss health policy and health system’s responses to the coronavirus pandemic, trying to identify their rationale, impact, strengths and weaknesses.

The panel welcomes papers with both a ‘single country’ or a comparative perspective, in order to discuss if and how different countries could learn from each other and to offer a contribution to the policy, societal and academic debates concerning health systems developments and health systems resilience. Papers focused on both developed and developing countries are welcome.

This panel will offer the opportunity to bring together people with different disciplinary backgrounds and professional experiences to share results of their research and possible lessons to be learnt.

In order to address the above research questions, the panel welcomes paper from different disciplines like (but not limited to) health policy, social policy, health economics and health management and with different focuses (theoretical, empirical, policy oriented).

The panel accepts papers based on both primary and secondary data a well as literature reviews.

Contributions could focus on areas like (but not limited to) the following:

-          Models of governance and health policy response to the pandemic

-          Impact of the measures implemented

-          The relation between population health outcomes and health inequalities

-          Health systems’ capacity to manage the pandemic

-          The role of communication and public health campaign

-          Expansion of hospital capacity (beds, wards)

-          Training and repurposing of the health workforce

-          Roles, relationships and coordination between different stakeholders 

-          Rationale and development of the decision making process

The panel especially welcomes papers that could help understanding key factors associated with positive (and negative) health systems’ responses, in order to share experiences and lessons associated with health systems’ strengthening and resilience.