No abstract

In the context of a disease outbreak in a complex environment and a large geographical area, this investigation has provided a new perspective for understanding how the structure of a collaborative network of personnel affects the performance of the overall network.

The results showed that informal networks promoted community-based ad hoc and formal networks, thus making overall disaster medicine and public health preparedness more effective. (Disaster Med Public Health Preparedness. 2017;11:343-354).

Inter-organisational coordination data collection and analyses of H1N1 outbreak: A pilot field studyImproving effectiveness in response to H1N1 outbreaks requires us to understand how different organisations within the outbreak coordination network work collectively to share information needed to operate at optimal level. Research for developing reliable framework for the collection of inter-organisational coordinated response data and its impact on decision-making and support system for disease outbreak is lacking to date.We introduce a pilot field study using social networks based approach to capture H1N1 inter-organisational coordination data by introducing qualitative questionnaire and quantitative survey, which resulted in discovering the hidden social networks of coordination. Here, we propose a schema that can be used to classify the quantitative data collection and preparation for further empirical analysis and suggest that lessons learned from this can be applied to explore possible data collection and analysis for other types of natural and man made crises.

When multiple agencies respond to a disease outbreak (i.e., H1N1 and SARS), the coordination of actions is complex and evolves over time. We know little about this because there has been no systematic empirical study of the dynamics of coordination during a disease outbreak. In this paper, we introduce an approach to the analysis of multi-agency intervention during a disease outbreak using methods previously applied to the study of social networks. The discussion is supported by a qualitative study of the implementation of the results of the analysis. We reveal that profound understanding of social network behaviour and emerging coordination concepts are corner stones for successful outbreak intervention. We look qualitatively at how Hunter New England Area Health Services applied these concepts to lead a successful coordination plan during an H1N109 endemic.