Trust Dynamics in Public Health During Health Emergencies: A Scoping Review

Trust in Public Health institutions is critical for the efficacy of public health interventions. However, trust at a population level is influenced by several factors including healthcare emergencies such as epidemics and pandemics, as well as the geopolitical landscape. Due to the shift from globalization to a multipolar geopolitical landscape in combination with multiple epidemics and pandemics, it is necessary to reassess the dynamics of trust in Public Health Institutions. The proposed scoping review assesses how has the trust in public health institutions in predominantly English-speaking OECD countries (i.e. Canada, the USA, the UK, New Zealand, and Australia), changed during health emergencies with a global dimension after January 1st, 2002 and how these changes were experienced by individuals during this period. The review protocol has been registered with Open Science Framework (DOI: https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/F97Q4) and the methodology is informed by the JBI Manual for Evidence Synthesis. The protocol, search, reference cleaning, and deduplication process has been completed, while the screening, data extraction, quality assessment, and analysis are the next steps. The results of the scoping review will provide context for the conclusions of a larger ongoing nationwide study called Trust Dynamics and Equity in Public Health: A Mixed-Methods Study on COVID-19.