Pandemic Stress Indicators: Expert Panel

As part of its Task Force on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, IGPA is actively evaluating the social and economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on Illinois residents.

About

IGPA is developing several Pandemic Stress Indicators, designed to evaluate the social and economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on Illinois residents. The Pandemic Stress Indicators grew out of the work on IGPA’s Task Force on the Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic. This indicator is a frequent poll of three sets of experts about pandemic policies. Experts on economics, public health, and/or vulnerable populations from across Illinois have generously agreed to provide regular opinions on various pandemic policies. 

IGPA published a Policy Spotlight, titled Ongoing Expert Advice on Pandemic Policies, identifying trends from the Pandemic Stress Indicator Expert Panel surveys conducted over the summer. The Policy Spotlight and all of the results from the Pandemic Stress Indicator Expert Panel survey can be found on this page.

Reports

Ongoing Expert Advice on Pandemic Policies

Read More
Policy, understanding and expectations are not in line with what infectious disease experts know—we are in the first mile of a marathon.

LATEST EXPERT PANEL REPORT

Wave 10: Dec. 2

Since May, as one component of the IGPA Pandemic Stress Indicators, a panel of three sets of experts have periodically shared their opinions about pandemic policies. Specialists on economics, public health, and/or vulnerable populations from across Illinois have generously agreed to provide regular perspectives on various pandemic policies. In answering the surveys, all panelists provide only their personal views and do not offer official positions on behalf of their respective institutions. The 10th wave of the Pandemic Stress Indicator Expert panel survey was launched on Dec. 2, and we received 19 responses. The focus of this final consultation of 2020 concerned, in large part, COVID-19 vaccines and plans to implement a comprehensive vaccination program. Respondents were asked how they would prioritize the distribution of vaccine doses at this early stage, while scarcity and logistical challenges of distributing the vaccine loom large. We asked who should determine the priority sequence for vaccination, offering five response options (the president, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention “(CDC”), governors, local officials, hospital and clinics) plus “other.” Nearly every respondent chose the CDC, with only one preferring sub-national decentralization of the decision (“governors”) and one selecting “the FDA—the entity actually doing it”. [1] We next sought our respondents’ views about who should receive the vaccine first, by listing 10 groups (randomly ordered) and asking for rankings, from 1 (highest priority) to 10 (lowest). Table 1 reveals near consensus that those first in line should be hospital employees working directly with COVID-19 patients. The next highest rankings, in a near tie, were hospital workers not directly in contact with COVID-19 patients and employees at long-term-care facilities. Congregate care facilities have been hot spots for COVID-19 spread throughout the U.S., so it is probably not surprising that residents of long-term care facilities came next. Respondents exhibited less agreement on the remaining groups, as the relatively close clustering of means over the fifth through 10th items in Table 1 reveals. A different dimension of priority is how available vaccine doses will be distributed across and within states. In regard to the latter, we asked, “Within Illinois, do you expect that the procedure for allocating vaccine doses across regions/counties will be fully transparent?” Respondents were quite evenly divided and unsure: five said yes, four no, and 10 opted for maybe or not sure.

Previous Panel Reports

MEMBERS OF THE EXPERT PANEL

Evan Anderson

Affiliation

Northern Illinois University

Laurence Appel

Affiliation

Chief Financial Officer at University of Illinois Hospital and Health Sciences System | University of Illinois Chicago

Brandi Barnes

Affiliation

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Mark Daniel Bernhardt

Affiliation

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Mark Borgschulte

Affiliation

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Stephen Brown

Affiliation

Director of Preventive Emergency Medicine, College of Medicine | University of Illinois Chicago

Beverly Bunch

Affiliation

Professor, School of Public Management and Policy | University of Illinois Springfield

Patricia Byrnes

Affiliation

Associate Professor, College of Business and Management | University of Illinois Springfield

Lorraine Conroy

Affiliation

Professor and Division Director, Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences, School of Public Health | University of Illinois Chicago

Toni Corona

Affiliation

Madison County Health Department

Michael Fagan

Affiliation

Northwestern University

Joseph M. Feinglass

Affiliation

Northwestern University

Barbara Fiese

Affiliation

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Lidia Filus

Affiliation

Northeastern Illinois University

Tamara Fuller

Affiliation

Research Associate Professor and Director of the Children and Family Research Center, School of Social Work | University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Michael Gelder

Affiliation

Northwestern University

Robert J. Gordon

Affiliation

Northwestern University

Betsy Goulet

Affiliation

Clinical Assistant Professor, School of Public Management and Policy | University of Illinois Springfield

Jeremy Groves

Affiliation

Northern Illinois University

Bart Hagston

Affiliation

Jackson County Health Department

Mark D. Hayford

Affiliation

Loyola University Chicago

Ronald Hershow

Affiliation

Associate Professor and Director of the Division of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, School of Public Health | University of Illinois Chicago

Hana Hinkle

Affiliation

University of Illinois Chicago

Joseph Hoereth

Affiliation

Director, Institute for Policy and Civic Engagement, College of Urban Planning and Public Affairs | University of illinois Chicago

Wiley Jenkins

Affiliation

Southern Illinois University

Timothy Johnson

Affiliation

University of Illinois Chicago

Greg Kaplan

Affiliation

University of Chicago

Sage Kim

Affiliation

Associate Professor, School of Public Health | University of Illinois Chicago

Brenda Koester

Affiliation

Associate Director, Family Resiliency Center | University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Kenneth Kriz

Affiliation

Distinguished Professor, School of Public Management and Policy | University of Illinois Springfield

Janet Liechty

Affiliation

Associate Professor, School of Social Work | University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Justin McDaniel

Affiliation

Southern Illinois University Carbondale

Ruby Mendenhall

Affiliation

Associate Professor, Department of Sociology, College of Liberal Arts & Sciences | University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Edward Mensah

Affiliation

University of Illinois Chicago

Linda Rae Murray

Affiliation

University of Illinois Chicago

Katie Parrish

Affiliation

Lake Land College

Sarah Patrick

Affiliation

Southern Illinois University Carbondale

Alicia Plemmons

Affiliation

Southern Illinois University Edwardsville

Carolyn A. Pointer

Affiliation

Southern Illinois University

Tara Powell

Affiliation

Associate Professor, School of Social Work | University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Tyler Power

Affiliation

Quad Cities Chamber of Commerce

Elizabeth Powers

Affiliation

Associate Professor, Department of Economics, College of Liberal Arts & Sciences | University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Chris Setti

Affiliation

Greater Peoria Economic Development Council

Abigail Silva

Affiliation

Loyola University Chicago

Brian Smith

Affiliation

University of Illinois Springfield

Tracy J. Smith

Affiliation

Executive Director, Office of Community Initiatives and Complex Care, School of Medicine, Southern Illinois University Springfield

Nicole M. Summers-Gabr

Affiliation

Assistant Professor, Department of Population Science and Policy, School of Medicine, Southern Illinois University

Vidya Sundareshan

Affiliation

Assistant Professor, Division of Infectious Diseases, School of Medicine, Southern Illinois University

James A. Swartz

Affiliation

Professor, College of Social Work, Office of the Vice-Chancellor for Health Affairs | University of Illinois Chicago

Kevin Sylwester

Affiliation

Professor and Interim Director of the School of Analytics, Finance, and Economics, Southern Illinois University Carbondale

Karriem Watson

Affiliation

University of Illinois Chicago

Moheeb Zidan

Affiliation

Assistant Professor, Department of Economics, Knox College

AUTHOR

Brian Gaines

Affiliation

Professor, Department of Political Science, College of Liberal Arts & Sciences | University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Email

bjgaines@illinois.edu

Brian Gaines’ research deals with all aspects of elections, electoral rules, and public opinion. Some of his work has dealt with campaign-finance fraud, pros and cons of convenience voting, inference from survey experiments, and assessing bias in electoral maps.