Information sharing, collaboration, and decision-making during disease outbreaks: the experience of Fiji

ABSTRACT

With disease outbreaks rising, responsive and resilient systems are needed. Understanding how disease outbreaks are managed, and how governments, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), and international governmental organisations (IGOs) work together to respond is essential. Fifteen key informant interviews and one group interview were conducted with individuals in water and health sectors from the Fijian government, NGOs, and IGOs at the water catchment, divisional, and national levels about decision-making during outbreaks. Thematic analysis found changes in communication, collaboration, and coordination during an outbreak. Communication becomes open, transparent, frequent, and utilises informal pathways including social media. Collaboration increases and becomes more flexible, leading to changes in roles, responsibilities and decision-making. The flexibility helps resource and fund redistribution. Coordination guided by government priorities, funding, laws, adaptability, and flexibility, enables targeted actions including resource prioritisation. Maximising the communication, collaboration, and coordination amongst sectors during disease outbreaks and non-outbreak periods can strengthen system resilience and responsiveness.

KEYWORDS:

• Communication
• coordination
• government
• non-governmental organisation
• outbreaks

Acknowledgments

Thank you to all the participants who took time out of their busy workdays to be interviewed. This work has been supported by the Stronger Systems for Health Security grant scheme by the Indo-Pacific Centre for Health Security, Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade Australia (Grant No: SSHS 74427), and Bloomberg Philanthropies Vibrant Oceans Initiative (Grant No: 53006). This research was done under a research permit to S.N.

Disclosure statement:

No potential competing interest was reported by the authors.

Disclosure of potential conflicts of interest

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).