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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Public Health
Sec. Disaster and Emergency Medicine
Volume 12 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2024.1411346
This article is part of the Research Topic Learning Interventions and Training: Providing Support during Health Emergencies View all 7 articles

Organisational learning from the public health response to the COVID-19 pandemic: findings from a qualitative interview study

Provisionally accepted
Elena Skryabina Elena Skryabina 1*Felicity Southworth Felicity Southworth 1Daljinder Chalmers Daljinder Chalmers 1Gabriel Reedy Gabriel Reedy 2Richard Amlôt Richard Amlôt 1
  • 1 UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA), London, United Kingdom
  • 2 King's College London, London, England, United Kingdom

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    System learning from major incidents is essential for enhancing preparedness for responding to future adverse events. Sharing learning not only stimulates further improvements, preventing the repetition of mistakes, but may also promote collaboration and the adoption of evidencedbased best practices. As part of a qualitative interview study designed to explore lessons learned, this paper describes the experiences and perspectives of 30 staff from the public health agency responsible for the national COVID-19 response in the United Kingdom. The focus of the interviews was on enabling factors and practices that worked well, as well as those that were more challenging, and which, if addressed, could improve responses to future infectious disease incidents.The interviews elicited valuable insights across various thematic areas that could inform emergency preparedness activities for future infectious disease outbreaks. The outcomes of this study, while integral for the UK agency responsible for public health, extend beyond organisational boundaries and contribute to a broader spectrum of activities aimed at facilitating global learning from the COVID-19 response.

    Keywords: organisational learning, learning from COVID-19, COVID-19 lessons, public health learning, Qualitative phenomenological study

    Received: 02 Apr 2024; Accepted: 22 Jul 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Skryabina, Southworth, Chalmers, Reedy and Amlôt. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Elena Skryabina, UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA), London, United Kingdom

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