A word from our Chief Executive - Dr Andrew Cleland
Evidence and decision making
I have been regularly asked by international colleagues what was different here in the way evidence informed Government decisions and was this a success factor in our COVID-19 response?
Some of the answers lie in a recently released video on the use of science to inform the Whakaari White Island response which I commend to everyone.
In my view, starting with the several significant Canterbury earthquakes, and through a succession of events like the Kaikoura quake, the Mosque shootings, the Whakaari eruption and Mycoplasma bovis outbreak, this country has progressively developed what seem to be world-leading protocols for embedding evidence in emergency decision making. This relies in large part on the government science advice system. As well as being more practised thanks to the unfortunate string of events, I suspect we are also more committed. This in part reflects what I sense as a strong public desire to be shown the evidence and to know that government decisions are evidence-informed.
A discrete operating unit within the Society is the Science Media Centre. Led by Director Dacia Herbulock, this small group of staff operate with editorial independence, and with government funding to connect the media with evidence and informed experts. Progressively over the decade of the Centre’s operation, the media have learnt to turn to it to get commentary from experts. As you might expect, it has been operating flat out but behind the scenes since March. Many of the experts who have become household names built their skills through working with the Centre, and have strong affiliations to Te Apārangi.
Of course those bringing forward the evidence are not the decision makers nor the operational managers as the video on the Whakaari response makes clear, and we are all aware of the public questioning of decisions and the quality of implementation on the ground. For example, experts have raised concerns about the impacts of historic erosion of technical capacity and capability in the public health system on this nation’s response.
But overall, when I answer international colleagues, I do so with a sense that, by international standards, this nation is doing relatively well in getting evidence from experts to the right places where it is treated respectfully, and that our public are receiving good quality information on the science and other evidence from the media.