REVIEW article
Front. Public Health
Sec. Disaster and Emergency Medicine
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2025.1584026
Use of multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) to support decision-making during health emergencies: a scoping review
Provisionally accepted
- 1Interdepartmental Research Center in Emergency and Disaster Medicine, University of Eastern Piedmont, Novara, Italy
- 2Department of Translational Medicine, University of Eastern Piedmont, Novara, Piedmont, Italy
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The mismatch between the health needs of populations affected by emergencies and resources devoted to response is projected to further increase. Making the response more effective is one of the solutions to meet the growing needs. Multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) has been successfully used to increase effectiveness in various fields by supporting decision-making. However, no review of its application to all-hazard health emergencies has been done to date.A review of peer-reviewed English-language articles published since 2004 was conducted in May 2024 using Scopus, PubMed and Web of Science databases. The review focused on the empirical application of MCDA to support decision-making during health emergencies. The review was guided by the Joanna Briggs Institute methodology for scoping reviews and adhered to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses extension for Scoping Reviews. Quantitative data were analyzed using summary statistics and qualitative data were analyzed using content analysis.Results: Seventy-one articles were included after screening. The articles described the MCDA application to support a variety of decision problems related to health emergency management. However, the technique was mostly applied to infectious hazards management and only seldom to other hazards. The review also found a lack of standardized methodology for identifying alternatives and criteria, weighting, computation of model output, methods of dealing with uncertainty, and stakeholder engagement.The review provides an overview of the current use of the MCDA approach to support decision-making in health emergency management and informs areas of future development. The review emphasizes that while MCDA is already used for infectious hazards, it is underutilized for other types of health emergencies. Developing tailored MCDA approaches for health emergencies, including defining evaluation criteria and stakeholder engagement, may improve uptake of the technique and benefit the efforts to meet the growing health needs of the population affected by emergencies. https://osf.io/6kd5s/ Deleted: .
Keywords: Multi-criteria Decision Analysis, Health emergencies, Decision Support, Scoping review, emergency
Received: 26 Feb 2025; Accepted: 21 Apr 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Gaievskyi, Delfrate, Ragazzoni and Bahattab. 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: Stanislav Gaievskyi, Interdepartmental Research Center in Emergency and Disaster Medicine, University of Eastern Piedmont, Novara, Italy
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