Public health intelligence challenges for local public health authorities responding to disease outbreaks: a mixed-methods systematic review protocol

Background Information management capacity is crucial for controlling risks from health emergencies. But little is known about how sub-national public health bodies overcome public health intelligence challenges when responding to disease outbreaks. This paper describes a protocol for a mixed-methods systematic review to fill this knowledge gap. In addition to describing the evidence base and characterising public health intelligence responses, it will explore reported facilitators and barriers to response. Methods Research on sub-national Public Health Intelligence disease outbreak responses will be synthesised. The review will be limited to articles published in English, during or after 2019. Key electronic databases will be searched for peer-reviewed research articles of all study designs. Two reviewers will independently screen articles for relevance. Articles that refer to a Public Health Intelligence response to a propagated disease outbreak by a sub-national Public Health Authority will be included. Quality assessment of included articles will be undertaken using tools appropriate for the study design. An integrated synthesis will be performed. Discussion This review will describe and synthesise the recent literature on sub-national Public Health Authorities’ responses to propagated disease outbreaks. The systematic design will limit bias and the inclusion of data from quantitative, qualitative and mixed-methods studies will ensure relevant evidence is considered regardless of the methodology used to produce it. The review is part of a larger research project which aims to explore the role of sub-national public health intelligence during the COVID-19 pandemic and investigate how public health intelligence preparedness could be improved in the future. This could provide information to support the development of training, preparedness indicators and/or ways of implementing directives. PROSPERO registration CRD42022308042 (08/02/2022)