Assessing the Effectiveness of Pandemic Preparedness and Response Systems in Enhancing Public Health Resilience in the United States: A Scoping Review
Oliver Uchechukwu Okwor
*
Department of Medical Sciences, College of Medicine, Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Nnewi-Anambra State, Nigeria.
*Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Abstract
Background: The COVID-19 pandemic revealed severe weaknesses in the public health preparedness and response systems all across the world, and especially in the United States. It is necessary to understand the effectiveness of such systems to create resilient public health infrastructure to deal with the future pandemic.
Purpose: This scoping review is an attempt to synthesize the literature published in 2022-2025 to evaluate the effectiveness of the pandemic preparedness and response systems in improving the resilience of the population health in the United States.
Methods: Six databases and source types such as PubMed, Web of Science, Google Scholar, U.S. government repositories, websites of public health organizations, and grey literature platforms were systematically searched. Sources were filtered by pre-established inclusion and exclusion criteria, and included pandemic preparedness, response efficacy, or public health resilience in the U.S. published between 2022 and 2025.
Findings: A total 50 sources were incorporated and examined in seven thematic areas, including government policy and oversight, state and local preparedness, health system resilience, COVID-19 lessons learned, public health workforce and infrastructure, biosurveillance and early detection, and healthcare system readiness. The major findings are that there are still gaps in interagency coordination, workforce capacity, supply chain resilience, and surveillance infrastructure, and that there is a wide interstate variation in the level of preparedness.
Conclusions: Although some important progress has been achieved in highlighting the weaknesses that the COVID-19 revealed, addressing the issue of the inadequate level of investments in the public health infrastructure, workforce development, and coordinated response mechanisms is essential to improve pandemic preparedness and public health resilience in the United States.
Keywords: Pandemic preparedness, public health resilience, health system resilience, biosurveillance, response systems, COVID-19 lessons, health policy, United States