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. 2021 Sep;125(9):1179-1187.
doi: 10.1016/j.healthpol.2021.07.012. Epub 2021 Jul 31.

Corona-regionalism? Differences in regional responses to COVID-19 in Italy

Iris Bosa  1 , Adriana Castelli  2 , Michele Castelli  3 , Oriani Ciani  4 , Amelia Compagni  5 , Matteo M Galizzi  6 , Matteo Garofano  7 , Simone Ghislandi  5 , Margherita Giannoni  8 , Giorgia Marini  9 , Milena Vainieri  10
Affiliations

Corona-regionalism? Differences in regional responses to COVID-19 in Italy

Iris Bosa et al. Health Policy. 2021 Sep.

Abstract

The paper discusses the responses to the COVID-19 crisis in the acute phase of the first wave of the pandemic (February-May 2020) by different Italian regions in Italy, which has a decentralised healthcare system. We consider five regions (Lombardy, Veneto, Emilia-Romagna, Umbria, Apulia) which are located in the north, centre and south of Italy. These five regions differ both in their healthcare systems and in the extent to which they were hit by the first wave of COVID-19 pandemic. We investigate their different responses to COVID-19 reflecting on seven management factors: (1) monitoring, (2) learning, (3) decision-making, (4) coordinating, (5) communicating, (6) leading, and (7) recovering capacity. In light of these factors, we discuss the analogies and differences among the regions and their different institutional choices.

Keywords: COVID-19; Health management; Health policy; Italy; Regional responses.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declaration of Competing Interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

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