Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Review
. 2022 Jun;7(6):e009389.
doi: 10.1136/bmjgh-2022-009389.

A call for citizen science in pandemic preparedness and response: beyond data collection

Yi-Roe Tan  1 , Anurag Agrawal  2 , Malebona Precious Matsoso  3 , Rebecca Katz  4 , Sara L M Davis  5 , Andrea Sylvia Winkler  6   7 , Annalena Huber  6 , Ashish Joshi  8 , Ayman El-Mohandes  8 , Bruce Mellado  9   10 , Caroline Antonia Mubaira  11 , Felipe C Canlas  12 , Gershim Asiki  13 , Harjyot Khosa  14 , Jeffrey Victor Lazarus  15 , Marc Choisy  16   17 , Mariana Recamonde-Mendoza  18   19 , Olivia Keiser  20 , Patrick Okwen  21 , Rene English  22 , Serge Stinckwich  23 , Sylvia Kiwuwa-Muyingo  13 , Tariro Kutadza  11 , Tavpritesh Sethi  24 , Thuso Mathaha  9 , Vinh Kim Nguyen  5 , Amandeep Gill  25 , Peiling Yap  25
Affiliations
Review

A call for citizen science in pandemic preparedness and response: beyond data collection

Yi-Roe Tan et al. BMJ Glob Health. 2022 Jun.

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has underlined the need to partner with the community in pandemic preparedness and response in order to enable trust-building among stakeholders, which is key in pandemic management. Citizen science, defined here as a practice of public participation and collaboration in all aspects of scientific research to increase knowledge and build trust with governments and researchers, is a crucial approach to promoting community engagement. By harnessing the potential of digitally enabled citizen science, one could translate data into accessible, comprehensible and actionable outputs at the population level. The application of citizen science in health has grown over the years, but most of these approaches remain at the level of participatory data collection. This narrative review examines citizen science approaches in participatory data generation, modelling and visualisation, and calls for truly participatory and co-creation approaches across all domains of pandemic preparedness and response. Further research is needed to identify approaches that optimally generate short-term and long-term value for communities participating in population health. Feasible, sustainable and contextualised citizen science approaches that meaningfully engage affected communities for the long-term will need to be inclusive of all populations and their cultures, comprehensive of all domains, digitally enabled and viewed as a key component to allow trust-building among the stakeholders. The impact of COVID-19 on people's lives has created an opportune time to advance people's agency in science, particularly in pandemic preparedness and response.

Keywords: COVID-19; health systems; infections, diseases, disorders, injuries; public health.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

Competing interests: None declared.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Spectrum of citizen science activities which the public can participate in.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Five levels of citizen engagement.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Research gaps in the continuum of participatory data generation-modelling-visualisation.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

See all "Cited by" articles

References

    1. The independent panel for pandemic preparedness & response. Available: https://theindependentpanel.org/ - PMC - PubMed
    1. Intrusive, omnipresent surveillance growing during COVID-19 pandemic, un expert warns. Available: https://www.ohchr.org/en/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=26446&...
    1. COVID-19 National Preparedness Collaborators . Pandemic preparedness and COVID-19: an exploratory analysis of infection and fatality rates, and contextual factors associated with preparedness in 177 countries, from Jan 1, 2020, to Sept 30, 2021. Lancet 2022;399:1489-1512. 10.1016/S0140-6736(22)00172-6 - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Glazik R, Moore H, Kennedy D, et al. . A snapshot of the practicality and barriers to COVID-19 interventions: public health and healthcare workers' perceptions in high and low- and middle-income countries. PLoS One 2021;16:e0260041. 10.1371/journal.pone.0260041 - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Bangerter A. Investigating and rebuilding public trust in preparation for the next pandemic. 19. Hogrefe Publishing, 2014: 1–3. 10.1027/1016-9040/a000173 - DOI

Publication types