Informing COVID-19 Response and Health Equity Agenda: Collection of Public Health Reports Articles on Emerging Viral Epidemics in the United States, 1878-2021

OBJECTIVE: Public Health Reports (PHR) is the oldest public health journal in the United States and has reported on viral epidemics since the 19th century. We describe the creation and analysis of a collection of historic PHR articles on emerging viral epidemics in the United States to inform public health response to COVID-19 and future epidemics. METHODS: We searched databases from 1878 through 2021 using custom search strings and conducted a manual search for articles published under previously used names for PHR. We evaluated all articles based on inclusion/exclusion criteria and coded the final list for virus/disease, article type, public health emergency preparedness and response capabilities from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and PubMed citation count. RESULTS: We identified 349 relevant articles including 130 commentaries/reviews/editorials, 79 epidemiologic reports, 75 research articles, and 65 case study/practice articles. The collection focused on influenza (n = 244), COVID-19 (n = 75), dengue (n = 14), and other emerging viruses, such as Zika and Ebola (n = 25). The collection included 48 articles on health disparities/health of various disadvantaged populations, highlighting such disparities as race and ethnicity (n = 22), socioeconomic status (n = 17), and age (n = 15). When we categorized articles by CDC public health emergency preparedness and response capabilities, we found that 207 addressed surveillance and epidemiologic investigation, 36 addressed community preparedness, and 28 addressed medical countermeasure dispensing and administration. The articles addressing surveillance and epidemiologic investigation, nonpharmaceutical interventions, and community preparedness had the most PubMed citations (799, 334, and 308, respectively). CONCLUSIONS: PHR’s historic articles on US emerging viral epidemics covered a range of virus/disease types, emergency preparedness and response capabilities, and contribution types and were widely cited in the scholarly literature. This publicly available and continuously updated collection is a valuable resource for pandemic planning and response.