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1. A systematic review of public policy implementation during the Covid‐19 pandemic: Current topics and future directions

   https://doi.org/10.1111/ropr.12607  

   de_Oliveira_Lemos_Novato, Valeria; Toscano, Cristiana Maria; da_Rocha Soares Ferreira, Vicente; Patel, Shivani (March 2024, Review of Policy Research)

   Abstract The Covid‐19 pandemic greatly impacted global public policy implementation. There is a lack of research synthesizing the lessons learned during Covid‐19 from a policy perspective. A systematic review was conducted following PRISMA guidelines to examine the literature on public policy implementation during the Covid‐19 pandemic in order to gain comprehensive insights into current topics and future directions. Five clusters of topics were identified: lessons from science, crisis governance, behavior and mental health, beyond the crisis, and frontlines and trust. Extensive collaboration among public health departments emerged as a significant research theme. Thirty recommendations for future research were identified, including the examination of frontline worker behavior, the use of just tech in policy implementation, and the investigation of policies driving improvements in global public health. The findings indicate that current research on public policy implementation during the Covid‐19 pandemic extends beyond health and economic crisis‐related policies. However, further studies in a post‐pandemic context are needed to validate the identified topics and future directions. 

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2. Crisis Innovation Policy from World War II to COVID-19

   https://doi.org/10.1086/719253  

   Gross, Daniel P; Sampat, Bhaven N (January 2022, Entrepreneurship and Innovation Policy and the Economy)

   Innovation policy can be a crucial component of governments' responses to crises. Because speed is a paramount objective, crisis innovation may also require different policy tools than innovation policy in non-crisis times, raising distinct questions and tradeoffs. In this paper, we survey the U.S. policy response to two crises where innovation was crucial to a resolution: World War II and the COVID-19 pandemic. After providing an overview of the main elements of each of these efforts, we discuss how they compare, and to what degree their differences reflect the nature of the central innovation policy problems and the maturity of the U.S. innovation system. We then explore four key tradeoffs for crisis innovation policy---top-down vs. bottom-up priority setting, concentrated vs. distributed funding, patent policy, and managing disruptions to the innovation system---and provide a logic for policy choices. Finally, we describe the longer-run impacts of the World War II effort and use these lessons to speculate on the potential long-run effects of the COVID-19 crisis on innovation policy and the innovation system. 

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3. “Lives versus livelihoods”: Conflict and coherence between policy objectives in the COVID-19 pandemic

   Esmonde, Katelyn; Jones, Jeff; Johns, Michaela; Hutler, Brian; Faden, Ruth; Barnhill, Anne (August 2024, Social science medicine)

   Many policies were put in place during the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States to manage the negative impact of the coronavirus. Limiting severe illness and death was one important objective of these policies, but it is widely acknowledged by public health ethicists that pandemic policies needed to consider other factors. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with 38 people across 17 states who participated in the state-level COVID-19 pandemic policy process, we examine how those actors recounted their engagement with four different objectives over the course of the pandemic: protecting public health with respect to COVID-19 (which we refer to as pathogen-focused disease prevention), protecting the economy, promoting the public’s broader health and wellbeing, and preserving and restoring individual freedoms. We describe the different ways that pathogen-focused disease prevention was thought to have conflicted with, or to have been coherent with, the other three policy objectives over the course of the pandemic. In tracing the shifting relationships between objectives, we highlight four reasons put forward by the participants for why policy changes occurred throughout the pandemic: a change on the part of decisionmaker(s) regarding the perceived acceptability of the negative effects of a policy on one or more policy objectives; a change in the epistemic context; a change in the ‘tools in the toolbox’; and a change in the public’s attitudes that affected the feasibility of a policy. We conclude by considering the ethical implications of the shifting relationships that were described between objectives over the course of the pandemic. 

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4. From print to perspective: A mixed-method analysis of the convergence and divergence of COVID-19 topics in newspapers and interviews

   https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pdig.0000736  

   Chen, Qingqing; Crooks, Andrew; Sullivan, Adam J; Surtees, Jennifer A; Tumiel-Berhalter, Laurene (February 2025, PLOS Digital Health)

   Yang, Yuzhe (Ed.)

   In the face of the unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic, various government-led initiatives and individual actions (e.g., lockdowns, social distancing, and masking) have resulted in diverse pandemic experiences. This study aims to explore these varied experiences to inform more proactive responses for future public health crises. Employing a novel “big-thick” data approach, we analyze and compare key pandemic-related topics that have been disseminatedtothe public through newspapers with those collectedfromthe public via interviews. Specifically, we utilized 82,533 U.S. newspaper articles from January 2020 to December 2021 and supplemented this “big” dataset with “thick” data from interviews and focus groups for topic modeling. Identified key topics were contextualized, compared and visualized at different scales to reveal areas of convergence and divergence. We found seven key topics from the “big” newspaper dataset, providing a macro-level view that covers public health, policies and economics. Conversely, three divergent topics were derived from the “thick” interview data, offering a micro-level view that focuses more on individuals’ experiences, emotions and concerns. A notable finding is the public’s concern about the reliability of news information, suggesting the need for further investigation on the impacts of mass media in shaping the public’s perception and behavior. Overall, by exploring the convergence and divergence in identified topics, our study offers new insights into the complex impacts of the pandemic and enhances our understanding of key issues both disseminated to and resonating with the public, paving the way for further health communication and policy-making. 

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5. Governing in a Polarized Era: Federalism and the Response of U.S. State and Federal Governments to the COVID-19 Pandemic

   https://doi.org/10.1093/publius/pjab024  

   Birkland, Thomas A; Taylor, Kristin; Crow, Deserai A; DeLeo, Rob (August 2021, Publius: The Journal of Federalism)

   Abstract How does the state of American federalism explain responses to COVID-19? State-by-state variations to the COVID-19 pandemic illustrate the political dynamics of “kaleidoscopic federalism,” under which there is no single prevailing principle of federalism. In the COVID-19 pandemic, features of kaleidoscopic federalism combined with shortcomings in the public health system under the Trump administration, leading to fragmented responses to the pandemic among the states. Federalism alone does not explain the shortcomings of the United States’ response to the pandemic. Rather, the fragmented response was driven by state partisanship, which shaped state public health interventions and resulted in differences in public health outcomes. This has sobering implications for American federalism because state-level partisan differences yield different and unequal responses to the pandemic. 

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