ASSESSMENT OF PROACTIVE VERSUS REACTIVE SOCIAL MARKETING RESPONSES AND MEDICAL INTERVENTIONS TO EPIDEMICS AND PANDEMICS: A SYSTEMATIC LITERATURE REVIEW

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the first tranche of scholarly articles published on the new Coronavirus disease (COVID-19), between December 2019 to February 2020, as documented by the World Health Organization. This is with a view to undertaking a comparative of the fields of studies of those papers along the lines of medical and social sciences, so as to determine the extent of proactive and reactive social marketing involved, and directions for future research. The authors applied a systematic literature review method, in a verifiable and reproducible manner, using a qualitative research approach. The findings revealed that majority of the initial published articles on COVID-19 belong more to the medical sciences (62%) than the social sciences (28%), indicating that social science studies needs more time and voluminous data. Again, published articles focusing on social marketing or public positive behavior changes toward COVID-19 was also insignificant (12%). The articles on the medical areas of COVID-19 covered diverse areas: infection prevention and control, epidemiology case studies, medical ethics, virology, immunology, clinical care and treatment, epidemiology / epidemic response, biotechnology and pharmaceuticals. So, initial academic research in the fight against COVID-19, placed undue emphasis on the epidemiological and curative side, rather than on the social marketing (public awareness, preventive and behavior change) side, which is what is really needed to win the war against COVID. Hence, it is recommended that for medical interventions and social marketing to contribute significantly towards epidemic and pandemic prevention and controls, proactive rather than reactive strategies have to be given serious attention. This implies having a social marketing master plan pre-epidemic and pre-pandemic, not a reactive or firebrigade approach. Again, to contribute meaningfully towards epidemic and pandemic preventions and control, social science studies should not be narrowed down to how society behaved only, but on how society ought to behave in handling the problem, in order to elicit the desired behavior changes.