Guide for designing and conducting in-action and after-action reviews

While every public health emergency response is novel in some way, they all offer practical insights into what worked, what did not work and how preparedness and response can be strengthened for future events. Action reviews provide a structured way to capture and act on these lessons learned during and after a public health emergency.

This guide presents a three-stage approach for conducting an action review. At the core of this approach is an action review workshop that brings together relevant stakeholders to map the events and actions of an ongoing or past public health emergency to identify instances of good practice, pain points and potential solutions. The findings and proposed corrective actions are collated into a final report. This report is used to develop an action plan that should be implemented to improve response activities.

This guide is organised into two parts.

Part I provides an overview of the entire action review process. It is organised chronologically and divided into three sections that correspond with each stage of an action review:

• Preparation
• Action review
• Follow-up

Part II presents ECDC’s methodology for conducting action review workshops, which is intended to be used during the ‘Action review’ stage described in Part I.

Editable templates for the various tools recommended in both parts of the guide can be found in the Supplementary materials.

A PowerPoint template for the Opening session of an action review workshop is also available.