New ECDC guide helps Europe turn lessons learned from public health emergencies into strengthened preparedness and response

ECDC has published a new comprehensive ‘Guide for designing and conducting in-action and after-action reviews’ to provide organisations and institutions responsible for public health emergency response with practical, step-by-step instructions for examining ongoing or past public health emergency response and translating insights into concrete improvements.

Action reviews strengthen preparedness and response planning by bringing together all the stakeholders involved in a public health emergency response to review their experiences and collaboratively generate actionable steps that can be taken to improve response activities.

’Learning from every public health emergency is essential if we want to improve how we respond to the next one,’ says Thomas Hofmann, ECDC Head of Section, Emergency Preparedness and Response. 

'It’s important that the action review process does not end with simply understanding what happened – we must also identify what worked and what didn’t work, and translate these lessons into practical actions.’

The guide includes an overview of the entire action review process – preparing for the action review, conducting the action review, and following up on the action review – as well as detailed instructions for how to conduct the action review workshop that is at the heart of the process. It also includes editable templates for all of the supporting documents referred to in the guide, to make undertaking the action review process as simple as possible for the guide’s users. 

Building on previous ECDC guidance and ECDC’s experience conducting action reviews across a variety of settings, the guide offers operational support for countries seeking to align with the European Union (EU) prevention, preparedness and response plan for health crises and the EU Regulation on Serious Cross-Border Threats to Health. In particular, European Union/European Economic Area countries that have undergone Public Health Emergency Preparedness Assessments (PHEPAs) may choose to use the guide to address recommendations to implement action reviews as a regular activity.

More information

In-action reviews (IARs) are conducted during a public health emergency to identify immediate improvements to the ongoing response, while after-action reviews (AARs) take place after an emergency to analyse the response and inform future preparedness planning. This guide can be used for both types of action reviews.