Next pandemic
Definition
Next pandemic refers to an anticipated future infectious disease event requiring widespread, voluntary, and sustained behavior change to prevent catastrophic spread of disease. Factors including higher levels of international travel, accelerating climate change, intensifying urbanization and deforestation, and increased human-animal contact raise the probability that future pandemics will occur more frequently and may exceed COVID-19 in severity. Public health responses to COVID-19 demonstrated that reactive, atheoretical prevention strategies produce limited impact, and preparation for the next pandemic therefore requires well-validated behavioral science models articulated specifically to pandemic contexts before such an event occurs. The Information-Motivation-Behavioral Skills (IMB) Model of Pandemic Risk and Prevention was developed to meet this need, offering a generalizable framework testable in current COVID-19 conditions, in localized epidemics, and in pandemic simulation studies.
Sources: Fisher & Fisher (2023)
Related Terms
- intervention (1 shared article)
- Information—Motivation—Behavioral Skills Model (1 shared article)
- prevention (1 shared article)
- COVID-19 (1 shared article)
- health behavior change (1 shared article)
Applications
Next Pandemic and IMB Model of Health Behavior Change
The IMB Model of Pandemic Risk and Prevention is designed to be deployable from the very outset of the next pandemic, addressing the three determinants of preventive behavior: accurate information about transmission, personal and social motivation to act, and the behavioral skills required to perform preventive actions effectively. Because the specific pathogen and transmission dynamics of the next pandemic are unknown, the model was constructed to generalize across diverse pandemic scenarios, populations, and cultures. Testing its assumptions in advance, whether through ongoing COVID-19 contexts or simulated pandemic scenarios, is the preparation strategy the model proposes.
Sources: Fisher & Fisher (2023)
Next Pandemic and Pandemic Preventive Behavior
Containing the next pandemic depends on voluntary, sustained preventive behavior at the individual, interpersonal, and community levels, with the specific behaviors required varying according to how the relevant pathogen spreads. COVID-19 demonstrated that even with widespread vaccine availability, uptake remains uneven across countries and populations, and behaviors such as masking and antiviral use are infrequently maintained. These gaps reflect a broader failure to embed comprehensive, theory-based behavior change approaches in public health systems before and during a pandemic.
Sources: Fisher & Fisher (2023)
