Gender Disparities of Youths in Trust on Health Management Systems during Post-COVID-19 in Bangladesh

AbstractIntroduction: To tackle deadly pandemics like COVID-19, men and women have to have faith in the country's health management system. The purpose of this paper is to find out the gender-based disparities in trust in the public health measures taken in Bangladesh during post COVID -19 pandemic.Methods: A cross-sectional study design and quantitative research approach were used to collect primary data. A total of 742 students from different socioeconomic backgrounds participated in the survey randomly by filling up a structured questionnaire from 15 June 2022 to 10 July 2022. The Wilks’ λ statistic, MANOVA and Regression analysis were performed in this study to find out the gender-based differences in trust in the public health measures taken in Bangladesh during post COVID -19 pandemic. Results: In a multivariate test, the p-value is 0.018 (p<0.05), which implies a significant difference between the trust of male and female among youths about public health measures during the post COVID-19 pandemic in Bangladesh. This study provides that overall infrastructure, responsiveness and attachments have a significant correlation with youth trust as all the p-values < 0.001. Conclusions: Health infrastructure and youths’ attachment to the various networks and institutions have more impact on determining the level of trust in government health measures during the post pandemic than the way of government responsiveness; policymakers and advocates will get significant insight from the findings of the study during post COVID-19. Without gender sensitive health policy measures, gaining citizen trust for the government will be difficult.