COVID-19 Policies and Interventions to Enable Preventative Behaviors

Globally, the impact of COVID-19 on society has been substantial and countries have responded to the pandemic in various ways. Much of the behavioral response to the pandemic has been driven by key insights from the scientific community - whether it be promoting adherence to disease containment measures such as hand-washing, social distancing and mask wearing or advocating for vaccinations. These insights on behavioral responses to the pandemic have informed government response to the pandemic around the world and has led to important policy changes, with varying implications. Depending on the ways in which the pandemic has unfolded in countries across the world, governments have responded with various policy changes and interventions to enable preventative behaviors which have had far reaching implications on the individual, families, communities, education and the economy. These policy changes and interventions have influenced citizen behaviors, as well as those of important decision makers.

The goal of this Research Topic is to allow potential contributors to share scholarly work that informs the scientific community on the role health behaviors and policy changes, as a result of COVID-19, has played in shaping policies, influencing decision makers and countries response to COVID-19. Our goal is to provide those who design policies or implement research findings to provide feedback to the scientific community regarding the challenges to policy changes and implementation at various levels of society.

We are specifically interested in empirical research, reviews, evidence reviews, opinions and methodological pieces papers. We would also value policy evaluation studies and data-driven impact findings or even emerging findings.

We would like to include papers that address:
• The development, advocacy, implementation, or evaluation of policies around COVID-19 and health behaviors, within or across countries;
• The structural barriers and enablers to policy implementations and strategies related to health behaviors in the context on COVID-19;
• Inequality within and between countries regarding health behaviors and policy;
• The role of and public response to behavioral insights from the scientific community in policy development and government response;
• Factors around leadership and communication around health behavioral policy implementation at various levels of society.