Policy impact of a COVID-19 Response Team: Global perspective and UK case study

Policy impact of a COVID-19 Response Team: Global perspective and UK case study

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Introduction: Scientific evidence, along with other factors, can play an important role in policy decision making.Advanced analytics and mathematical models can produce such scientific simply boho classroom evidence to inform policy decisions and mobilise action.The Imperial College COVID-19 Response Team (ICCRT) provided timely and robust epidemiological analysis essential to inform the policy response to governments and public health agencies around the world.We aim to quantify the impact of the work on policy and define policy relevant evidence.Methods: All outputs published by members of the ICCRT between 01-01-2020 and 28-02-2022 were inductively analysed to identify emerging themes.

A systematic search of the Overton database identified policy document references as an indicator for policy impact.Statistical analyses of outputs was conducted to compare outputs and policy impact across pandemic time windows (pre-vaccination; vaccination) and themes.Results: We identified 620 outputs (pre-prints 15.6%, reports 29.0%, journal articles 37.

3% and news items 18.1%).More than half (55.9%) of all reports and preprints were subsequently peer reviewed and published as a journal article after 201.8 days (mean).

The team authored 116 outputs (18.7%) outputs published by the UK government, 130 outputs (20.9%) were available to or considered by UK government at.Of all non-governmental published outputs, 43.1% (217 of 504) were referenced in one or more policy documents from 41 countries or regions in 26 different languages.

The outputs were referenced in 1746 policy documents, with a mean time between output publication and policy reference of 255.7 days (mean).We report 13 themes across 620 outputs of which severity, healthcare demand and capacity (n=123, 19.8% of outputs) was ivoryjinelle.com most frequently theme.The most frequent theme of outputs referenced in policy documents was non-pharmaceutical interventions (n=453, 25.

9% of policy references).The themes of outputs and what was policy relevant changed over time accordingly.The communication format of the output was relevant to the impact of the work on policy.Public reports and preprints were crucial during the COVID-19 pandemic to the timely distribution of important research findings.Evidence produced by the ICCRT and of relevance to policymakers changed accordingly during the course of the pandemic.

Conclusion: Work published by the ICCRT impacted global and domestic policy, particularly in the UK.Understanding which evidence was relevant to policy decision making can help direct focus and resources more effectively during a future public health emergency of international concern.The policy impact from ICCRT news items highlights the effectiveness of this unique communication strategy ensuring research informs policy decisions more effectively.Communication channels that were established can be leveraged for future response strategies.Further research is required to better understand informal data-to-policy-pathways, improve transparent and bidirectional communication and prepare an effective response to future public health emergencies.