Organizing, Communicating, and Costing in Risk Governance: Learning Lessons from the H1N1 Pandemic

Organizing, Communicating and Costing Risk Governance: Lessons from the 2009 A H1N1 PandemicOrganization, communication and costs of governance from the story: The story of the pandemic A H1N1 of 2009 The 2009 pandemic was the first global health crisis of the 21st century to be managed under the auspices of the new international health regulations (2005). Since the early 1990s, the World Health Organization has sought to consolidate a leading position in global health crises in a context of re-emergence of certain risks and the multiplication of global health actors at its side. . The management of the H1N1 pandemic took place in a complex environment undergoing profound change in terms of international public health policy. Since 2010, state agencies and international organizations have engaged in vast experience feedback operations which have resulted in public reports, the aim of which is to better understand how the pandemic has been managed around the world. Traditionally, feedback is far from simple to conduct because many organizational cultures are characterized by a culture of blame when confronted with dysfunctions or self-reported errors. This is the reason why this momentum given by national and international public health organizations, or by national parliaments and parliamentary committees in the post-crisis period, offers a very important source of data for the analyzes of researchers as well as for public policy evaluations. The questions of risk assessment strategies from the combined point of view of organizational processes, risk communication and induced costs have never been asked in a multidisciplinary framework. In addition, these three aspects (Organizing, communicating and evaluating costs) have been the subject throughout the crisis (or have been subject to criticism) of fundamental criticism and very lively public controversies during and after the pandemic. These three angles constitute the framework of this project. This project, which analyzes the organizational responses of three countries in particular (Switzerland, the United States and Japan) in relation to the reference framework of the World Organization of health, would like/wish to demonstrate that organizational strategies for mitigation, risk communication and cost-benefit analysis are in fact very closely linked. Planning and developing organizational responses during periods of severe crisis needs to be articulated with a corresponding risk communication strategy, which itself must not only account for the intrinsic difficulties linked to planning, decision-making and organization of this type of event but also show the organization of activities that has been chosen. Likewise, this strategy must attempt to propose an economic evaluation of the costs incurred and must seek to convince and attract the support of the communities affected by the allocation of these costs. Planning and organizing, communicating and paying bills are not three sequential and independent moments in the unfolding of such a crisis. The fact that these aspects are traditionally, and also in the case of this crisis, understood separately has naturally fueled by numerous social controversies, regardless of the "good" decisions that may have been taken. In this project, we would like to test the following hypothesis: In a context where organizational and communication strategies as well as cost-benefit evaluations have not been integrated from the start into a comprehensive and global response, controversies, inevitable by nature, had the potential to grow and damage any transparency or mobilization efforts throughout the pandemic. Many decisions at the local and national level during the pandemic were not understood. Make sense of what happened and understand to what extent the pre-determined plans, the intense preparation, the previous health crises, the development of a hostile public, the presence of public controversies led public decision-makers and front-line actors to take certain paths rather than others, have yet to be properly investigated. It is in this context that this research must be understood. Keywords Risk communications; Organizational decision-making; Pandemic preparedness; global health; Cost-benefit Analysis; H1N1; Comparative health care systems Hauptdisziplin Soziology