Universität zu Köln

Pfaff, Holger ORCID: 0000-0001-9154-6575 and Schmitt, Jochen (2021). The Organic Turn: Coping With Pandemic and Non-pandemic Challenges by Integrating Evidence-, Theory-, Experience-, and Context-Based Knowledge in Advising Health Policy. Front. Public Health, 9. LAUSANNE: FRONTIERS MEDIA SA. ISSN 2296-2565

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Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has posed an extraordinary challenge for public health and health policy. Questions have arisen concerning the main strategies to cope with this situation and the lessons to be learned from the pandemic. This conceptual paper aims to clarify these questions via sociological concepts. Regarding coping strategies used during the pandemic, there is a strong tendency for health policymakers to rely on expert knowledge rather than on evidence-based knowledge. This has caused the evidence-based healthcare community to respond to urgent demands for advice by rapidly processing new knowledge. Nonetheless, health policymakers still mainly rely on experts in making policy decisions. Our sociological analysis of this situation identified three lessons for coping with pandemic and non-pandemic health challenges: (1) the phenomenon of accelerating knowledge processing could be interpreted from the organizational innovation perspective as a shift from traditional mechanistic knowledge processing to more organic forms of knowledge processing. This can be described as an organic turn. (2) The return of experts is part of this organic turn and shows that experts provide both evidence-based knowledge as well as theoretical, experiential, and contextual knowledge. (3) Experts can use theory to expeditiously provide advice at times when there is limited evidence available and to provide complexity-reducing orientation for decisionmakers at times where knowledge production leads to an overload of knowledge; thus, evidence-based knowledge should be complemented by theory-based knowledge in a structured two-way interaction to obtain the most comprehensive and valid recommendations for health policy.

Item Type:	Journal Article
Creators:	Creators Email ORCID ORCID Put Code Pfaff, Holger UNSPECIFIED orcid.org/0000-0001-9154-6575 UNSPECIFIED Schmitt, Jochen UNSPECIFIED UNSPECIFIED UNSPECIFIED
URN:	urn:nbn:de:hbz:38-580188
DOI:	10.3389/fpubh.2021.727427
Journal or Publication Title:	Front. Public Health
Volume:	9
Date:	2021
Publisher:	FRONTIERS MEDIA SA
Place of Publication:	LAUSANNE
ISSN:	2296-2565
Language:	English
Faculty:	Unspecified
Divisions:	Unspecified
Subjects:	no entry
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Keywords Language SOCIAL-LEARNING THEORY; PLANNED BEHAVIOR; EXPERTS; COVID-19; CONSEQUENCES; CONSENSUS; STRATEGY; NOVICES Multiple languages Public, Environmental & Occupational Health Multiple languages
URI:	http://kups.ub.uni-koeln.de/id/eprint/58018