{"title":"Strategies to Promote Vaccine Uptake in the COVID-19 Pandemic: Exploring the \"Ladder of Intrusiveness\" in Three Countries.","authors":"Mirella Cacace, Michele Castelli, Federico Toth","doi":"10.1215/03616878-10910251","DOIUrl":"10.1215/03616878-10910251","url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Context: </strong>A key task for countries around the world facing the COVID-19 pandemic was to achieve high vaccination coverage of the population. To overcome \"vaccination inertia,\" governments adopted a variety of policy instruments. These instruments can be placed along a \"ladder of intrusiveness\" based on their degree of constraint of individual freedoms. The aim of this study is to investigate how the governments of three European countries moved along the ladder of intrusiveness and how the choice of policy instruments was influenced by contextual factors.</p><p><strong>Methods: </strong>The study draws on secondary data sources, including academic and gray literature, policy documents, and opinion polls, over an observation period from December 2020 to summer 2022. The study employs inductive logic to analyze data and identify the factors explaining similarities and differences across England, Germany, and Italy.</p><p><strong>Findings: </strong>The study identifies similarities and differences in how the three countries advanced along the ladder of intrusiveness. Contextual factors such as policy legacy, social acceptability, and ideological orientation contribute to explain the observations.</p><p><strong>Conclusions: </strong>Country-specific contextual factors play an important role in understanding the choice of policy instruments adopted by the three countries. Policy makers should carefully consider these factors when planning immunization strategies.</p>","PeriodicalId":54812,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Health Politics Policy and Law","volume":" ","pages":"133-162"},"PeriodicalIF":3.3,"publicationDate":"2024-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"9900571","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Emergency Regulatory Procedures, Pharmaceutical Regulatory Politics, and the Political Economy of Vaccine Regulation in the COVID-19 Pandemic.","authors":"Herschel Nachlis, Kyle Thomson","doi":"10.1215/03616878-10910278","DOIUrl":"10.1215/03616878-10910278","url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Context: </strong>Regulatory approaches to COVID-19 vaccine authorizations varied substantially across countries. Facing a common public health threat, what accounts for regulatory variation? This study focuses on emergency pharmaceutical and vaccine regulatory procedures and whether and how regulators' emergency pharmaceutical regulatory procedures going into the pandemic shaped regulatory processes and decisions during the pandemic.</p><p><strong>Methods: </strong>The authors conducted an analysis of seven high-impact national and international pharmaceutical regulators with case studies from Brazil, China, India, Russia, the United Kingdom, the United States, and the European Medicines Agency. The authors analyzed evidence from primary source executive and legislative branch regulations and statutes as well as national and international scientific and general press reporting; they also drew on the secondary analysis of scholars, practitioners, and international organizations.</p><p><strong>Findings: </strong>Inherited emergency pharmaceutical and vaccine regulatory procedures substantially shaped COVID-19 vaccine regulation during the pandemic. Variation in the presence and content of emergency regulatory procedures affected the quality of pandemic regulatory processes, outcomes, and procedural updates and differentially empowered policy-making experts and elected politicians.</p><p><strong>Conclusions: </strong>Emergency regulatory procedures affect key features of regulatory political economy and public health practices during crises. To improve future public health crisis responses, the authors provide policy recommendations for (1) establishing clear emergency pharmaceutical regulatory procedures, and (2) international collaboration.</p>","PeriodicalId":54812,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Health Politics Policy and Law","volume":" ","pages":"73-98"},"PeriodicalIF":3.3,"publicationDate":"2024-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"9952376","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Vaccine Nationalism: How China's State Media Misinform about Western Vaccines and Highlight the Successes of Chinese Vaccines to Different Audiences.","authors":"Patrick J Chester, Victor Shih","doi":"10.1215/03616878-10910260","DOIUrl":"10.1215/03616878-10910260","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>What motivates state-sponsored vaccine misinformation campaigns, given clear scientific evidence of vaccines' efficacy? The authors explored this issue through the lens of state-owned presses in mainland China and in Hong Kong. They first collected an original database of media reports on both Western and Chinese vaccines from 16 Chinese-language media publications based in mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. They found the quantity of coverage of Western vaccines by mainland state-owned media outlets to be much less than their coverage of Chinese vaccines, reflecting the unavailability of Western vaccines in mainland China. However, applying a dictionary-based sentiment analysis, the authors found that state-owned presses in mainland China still portrayed Western vaccines negatively. In Hong Kong, where there is direct competition between Chinese and Western vaccines, they found that state-owned presses gave high coverage of both Western and Chinese vaccines but greater negative coverage of Western vaccines. These findings are consistent with a Chinese producer-oriented \"vaccine nationalism\" policy designed to nurture the domestic biotechnology sector.</p>","PeriodicalId":54812,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Health Politics Policy and Law","volume":" ","pages":"163-187"},"PeriodicalIF":3.3,"publicationDate":"2024-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"9898308","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Holly Jarman, Elize Massard da Fonseca, Elizabeth J King
{"title":"The Political Economy of Vaccines during the COVID-19 Pandemic.","authors":"Holly Jarman, Elize Massard da Fonseca, Elizabeth J King","doi":"10.1215/03616878-10910797","DOIUrl":"10.1215/03616878-10910797","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":54812,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Health Politics Policy and Law","volume":" ","pages":"1-8"},"PeriodicalIF":3.3,"publicationDate":"2024-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"9898307","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Market Failure, State Failure: The Political Economy of Supply Chain Strengthening to Ensure Equitable Access to Vaccines and Medicines in Low- and Middle-Income Countries.","authors":"Ashley Fox","doi":"10.1215/03616878-10910242","DOIUrl":"10.1215/03616878-10910242","url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Context: </strong>Much of the existing work on the political economy of vaccine access has focused on how intellectual property rights agreements contribute to inequitable COVID-19 vaccine access between high-income and low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). The two solutions that emerged to scale up access in LMICs involved either voluntary arrangements under COVAX or a waiver of the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs) to allow immediate access to intellectual property. However, an additional constraint on access is weak and ineffective supply chains within LMICs that have eroded over several decades of health-sector reform.</p><p><strong>Methods: </strong>This article reviews the literature on the political economy of supply chain strengthening in LMICs and identifies key challenges to equitable access to emergent vaccines and other medicines emanating from market and state failures in internal supply chains.</p><p><strong>Findings: </strong>Over the past century, supply chain policies in LMICs have alternated among an emphasis on addressing market failures contributing to unaffordability of vaccines/medicines, an emphasis on state failures contributing to unavailability of vaccines/medicines, and a more recent move toward public-private hybrid arrangements to strengthen supply chains.</p><p><strong>Conclusions: </strong>In addition to reshoring production capacity through a TRIPs waiver, the international community must address chronic weakness in internal supply chains in LMICs to ensure access to novel vaccines/medicines.</p>","PeriodicalId":54812,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Health Politics Policy and Law","volume":" ","pages":"43-72"},"PeriodicalIF":3.3,"publicationDate":"2024-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"9900569","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Impacts of Politicization on Public Health Workers: The COVID-19 Pandemic in Oregon and Montana.","authors":"Christina Barsky, Earlene Camarillo","doi":"10.1215/03616878-10852601","DOIUrl":"10.1215/03616878-10852601","url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Context: </strong>The contributions from the field of public health to human society are numerous and are often taken for granted. The COVID-19 pandemic thrust the largely invisible public health workforce into the public eye. Like other career civil servants at the intersection of the citizen-state encounter, reports of uncooperative, hostile, and even violent confrontations between public health workers and those they serve are on the rise. This study explores the attitudes of public health professionals in two states in the American West.</p><p><strong>Methods: </strong>The authors conducted an anonymous web-based survey of public health professionals in Montana and Oregon one year into the COVID-19 pandemic.</p><p><strong>Findings: </strong>Public health workers who responded to the survey reported beliefs that the COVID-19 pandemic was politicized by actors in the government, both major political parties, the media, and the public broadly. This politicization affected workers' abilities to do their jobs, with respondents in Montana experiencing more negative impacts than those in Oregon.</p><p><strong>Conclusions: </strong>Public health workers face growing antagonism from the public and pressure from political leaders, which poses a significant concern for the public health workforce and for communities as they prepare to address and overcome future public health challenges.</p>","PeriodicalId":54812,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Health Politics Policy and Law","volume":" ","pages":"859-888"},"PeriodicalIF":3.3,"publicationDate":"2023-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"9867549","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Erin C Fuse Brown, Travis C Williams, Roslyn C Murray, David J Meyers, Andrew M Ryan
{"title":"Legislative and Regulatory Options for Improving Medicare Advantage.","authors":"Erin C Fuse Brown, Travis C Williams, Roslyn C Murray, David J Meyers, Andrew M Ryan","doi":"10.1215/03616878-10852628","DOIUrl":"10.1215/03616878-10852628","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The Medicare Advantage program was created to expand beneficiary choice and to reduce spending through capitated payment to private insurers. However, many stakeholders now argue that Medicare Advantage is failing to deliver on its promise to reduce spending. Three problematic design features in Medicare Advantage payment policy have received particular scrutiny: (1) how baseline payments to insurers are determined, (2) how variation in patient risk affects insurer payment, and (3) how payments to insurers are adjusted for quality performance. The authors analyze the statute underlying these three design features and explore legislative and regulatory strategies for improving Medicare Advantage. They conclude that regulatory approaches for improving risk adjustment and for recouping overpayments from risk-score gaming have the highest potential impact and are the most feasible improvement measures to implement.</p>","PeriodicalId":54812,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Health Politics Policy and Law","volume":" ","pages":"919-950"},"PeriodicalIF":3.3,"publicationDate":"2023-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"9873777","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"State Capacity and COVID-19: Targeted versus Population-Wide Restrictions.","authors":"Seung Hoon Chae","doi":"10.1215/03616878-10852619","DOIUrl":"10.1215/03616878-10852619","url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Context: </strong>During the COVID-19 pandemic, governments varied in their implementation of social distancing rules. Some governments were able to target their social distancing requirements toward specific segments of the population, whereas others had to resort to more indiscriminate applications. This article will argue that state capacity crucially affected the manner in which social distancing rules were applied.</p><p><strong>Methods: </strong>Using data from the Oxford COVID-19 Government Response Tracker, the author performed a series of ordered logistic regressions to examine whether state capacity increased the likelihood of more targeted applications of each social distancing rule.</p><p><strong>Findings: </strong>Given the same level of infectivity, more capable states were indeed more likely to resort to targeted applications of each social distancing restriction. Interestingly, the size of state capacity's effect varied by the type of restriction. State capacity had a stronger influence on face-covering requirements and private-gathering restrictions than it had on school closures, workplace closures, and stay-at-home orders.</p><p><strong>Conclusions: </strong>The way in which social distancing rules are applied is endogenous to state capacity. Effective governance is a precursor to more targeted and nuanced applications of social distancing rules.</p>","PeriodicalId":54812,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Health Politics Policy and Law","volume":" ","pages":"889-918"},"PeriodicalIF":3.3,"publicationDate":"2023-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"9867542","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Simon F Haeder, Wendy Y Xu, Thomas Elton, Ariana Pitcher
{"title":"State Efforts to Regulate Provider Networks and Directories: Lessons for the Future.","authors":"Simon F Haeder, Wendy Y Xu, Thomas Elton, Ariana Pitcher","doi":"10.1215/03616878-10852610","DOIUrl":"10.1215/03616878-10852610","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Managed care arrangements are the dominant form of insurance coverage in the United States today. These arrangements rely on a network of contracted providers to deliver services to their enrollees. After the managed care backlash, governments moved to ensure consumer access by issuing a number of requirements for carriers related to the composition and size of their networks and how this information is shared with consumers. The authors provide a comprehensive review of these state-based efforts to regulate provider network adequacy and provider directory accuracy for commercial insurance markets. In addition to common measures of adequacy, they also include requirements specifically targeted to underserved populations. Their assessment comes on the heels of recent empirical work that has raised significant questions about whether these efforts are effective, particularly considering the limited nature of enforcement. They also provide a brief overview and assessment of recent federal government efforts that replicate these state regulations with a focus on lessons learned from state regulations that may help improve their federal counterparts. Furthermore, they outline a future research agenda focused on a more comprehensive evaluation of efforts to ensure consumer access.</p>","PeriodicalId":54812,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Health Politics Policy and Law","volume":" ","pages":"951-968"},"PeriodicalIF":3.3,"publicationDate":"2023-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"9867544","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Matthew Motta, Timothy Callaghan, Kristin Lunz Trujillo
{"title":"\"The CDC Won't Let Me Be\": The Opinion Dynamics of Support for CDC Regulatory Authority.","authors":"Matthew Motta, Timothy Callaghan, Kristin Lunz Trujillo","doi":"10.1215/03616878-10852592","DOIUrl":"10.1215/03616878-10852592","url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Context: </strong>The CDC's ability to respond to communicable disease threats has recently met significant political and legal opposition. The authors unpack the influence of political ideology on support for CDC authority, and they experimentally assess whether highlighting ideology's role in responding to health threats might bolster CDC support.</p><p><strong>Methods: </strong>The authors fielded a demographically representative online survey experiment to 5,483 US adults. They assessed the sociopolitical correlates of CDC attitudes via multivariate regression analyses limited to a study-wide treatment group. Additionally, they tested the effectiveness of their experimental treatments via multivariate models that interact indicators of stimulus exposure with political ideology.</p><p><strong>Findings: </strong>Although most Americans support the CDC's role in responding to health crises, self-identified conservatives are significantly less likely to do so. This effect holds when accounting for respondents' limited government and anti-expert attitudes, which the authors replicated in nationally representative data. Encouragingly, though, emphasizing the CDC's role in combating the spread of COVID-19 is associated with significantly stronger levels of support on the ideological right.</p><p><strong>Conclusions: </strong>Efforts to communicate the CDC's importance in responding to health threats can help bridge existing ideological divides and might create an incentive for policy makers to codify the agency's regulatory powers.</p>","PeriodicalId":54812,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Health Politics Policy and Law","volume":" ","pages":"829-857"},"PeriodicalIF":3.3,"publicationDate":"2023-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"9873776","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}