Rigorous Policy-Making Amid COVID-19 and Beyond: Literature Review and Critical Insights

Policies shape society. Public health policies are of particular importance, as they often dictate matters in life and death. Accumulating evidence indicates that good-intentioned COVID-19 policies, such as shelter-in-place measures, can often result in unintended consequences among vulnerable populations such as nursing home residents and domestic violence victims. Thus, to shed light on the issue, this study aimed to identify policy-making processes that have the potential of developing policies that could induce optimal desirable outcomes with limited to no unintended consequences amid the pandemic and beyond. Methods: A literature review was conducted in PubMed, PsycINFO, and Scopus to answer the research question. To better structure the review and the subsequent analysis, theoretical frameworks such as the social ecological model were adopted to guide the process. Results: The findings suggested that: (1) people-centered; (2) artificial intelligence (AI)-powered; (3) data-driven, and (4) supervision-enhanced policy-making processes could help society develop policies that have the potential to yield desirable outcomes with limited unintended consequences. To leverage these strategies’ interconnectedness, the people-centered, AI-powered, data-driven, and supervision-enhanced (PADS) model of policy making was subsequently developed. Conclusions: The PADS model can develop policies that have the potential to induce optimal outcomes and limit or eliminate unintended consequences amid COVID-19 and beyond. Rather than serving as a definitive answer to problematic COVID-19 policy-making practices, the PADS model could be best understood as one of many promising frameworks that could bring the pandemic policy-making process more in line with the interests of societies at large; in other words, more cost-effectively, and consistently anti-COVID and pro-human.