The experience of the recent COVID-19 pandemic has shown that trust in Public Health agencies regarding the overall response and management of its consequences depends more on the belief that Public Health services led the entire effort with clear, documented recommendations and provided protection, and less than the result regarding the objective control of the pandemic.
According to the first representative survey for the US, from the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health, lower levels of trust were mainly related to beliefs that public health recommendations were influenced by the government, pharmaceutical companies, or in some cases the recommendations were contradictory.
“Emergency programs have been underfunded for decades, but today’s data makes it clear how important it is to ensure that public health services have the necessary resources, are empowered to make decisions based on science-based information, while also having an adequate communication infrastructure said lead researcher Gillian SteelFisher (Department of Health Policy and Management, Harvard).
You can read the research findings in the Euro-Mediterranean Institute newsletter here.
The research was published in Health Affairs, a themed issue focusing on public health lessons learned during the COVID-19 pandemic in the US. For more information, click here.
