The nexus between emergency management, public health, and equity: Responding to crisis, and mitigating future hazards

• Published date: 01 September 2023
• Author: Tonya E. Thornton,Claire Connolly Knox,Vanessa Lopez‐Littleton,Jeremy L. Hall
• Date: 01 September 2023
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.13712

GUEST EDITORIAL

The nexus between emergency management, public

health, and equity: Responding to crisis, and mitigating

future hazards

Tonya E. Thornton

1

| Claire Connolly Knox

2

| Vanessa Lopez-Littleton

3

|

Jeremy L. Hall

2

1

Global Connective Center, Washington, DC, USA

2

School of Public Administration, University of Central Florida, Orlando, FL, USA

3

Department of Health, Human Services, and Public Policy, California State University at Monterey Bay, Seaside, CA, USA

Correspondence

Tonya E. Thornton, Global Connective Center, Washington, DC, USA.

Email: tonya.e.thornton@gmail.com

In January 2021, the American Society for Public Adminis-

tration (ASPA) created an ad hoc committee, the

Pandemic Task Force (PTF), to serve as the primary reposi-

tory and communications channel for expertise related to

the novel coronavirus.

It is uncommon for ASPA to form a task force as there

must be an emerging challenge of a magnitude that

impacts all sectors—public, private, and nonprofit—and

that is unprecedented in both scope and complexity. Fit-

ting within this theme, there have been three great

administrative failures facing our field over the past

25 years within the United States (US): 9/11 Terrorist

Attacks (2001), Hurricane Katrina, and COVID-19 Pan-

demic. As the prevailing issue since 2020, the pandemic

affected everyone in every possible profession and con-

tinues to do so even to this day.

Established by Past President Kendra Stewart and now

President Allan Rosenbaum for a two-year period, the PTF

remained active through the 2023 annual meeting. The

PTF was charged with facilitating individual members as

well as section and chapter activities that were cross-

cutting in nature and of importance to the broader ASPA

membership. In addition, the committee strengthened

coherence for the organization’s pandemic-related efforts

and heightened awareness of all activities among external

audiences.

Membership on the PTF was comprised of 10 indi-

viduals who represented a cross-section of ASPA’s

membership and was required to be self-sustaining in

terms of its information gathering, development of

materials, and the like. The committee was co-chaired

by me and Kim Moloney with our collective expertise

in emergency management and intergovernmental rela-

tions, along with additional members whose expertise

spanned the broader disciplines of public administra-

tion, including environmental vulnerability, resiliency

and sustainability, cultural competency, social equity

and policy, nonprofit management, civil society, and

international governance.

Other members of the PTF included:

•Maria P. Aristigueta, University of Delaware

•Gloria Billingsley, Jackson State University

•Bok Gyo Jeong, Kean University

•Louise K. Comfort, University of Pittsburgh

•Claire Connolly Knox, University of Central Florida

•Vanessa Lopez-Littleton, California State University at

Monterey Bay

•Pablo Sanabria-Pulido, Universidad de los Andes,

Bogot

a, Colombia

•Eric Zeemering, University of Georgia

The PTF was specifically charged with providing a set

of deliverables, such as organizing professional webinars,

hosting presidential panels, and coordinating research

manuscripts that could offer widespread dissemination of

lessons learned and best practices to the larger ASPA

membership and broader field of public administration

academics and practitioners.

One of the requested deliverables among ASPA exec-

utive leadership was to organize a symposium for its flag-

ship professional journal, Public Administration Review.

This special issue provides us an opportunity to reflect on

such constructs more broadly, with an eye toward con-

ceptual development to inform present and future appli-

cations to crises of this magnitude. COVID-19 revealed

itself as being much more than a traditional crisis, it was

also an appendant social and economic crisis.

Received: 28 July 2023

DOI: 10.1111/puar.13712

1166 © 2023 American Society for Public Administration. Public Admin Rev. 2023;83:1166–1169.wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/puar