Caring after COVID – Swiss Health Policy and Programmatic Groups

COVID-19 holds the potential of bringing about substantial health care reforms as a response to the lessons learnt from the pandemic (Burger et al. 2022, Auener et al. 2020). A direct effect was the increasing focus on healthcare workers, which were put in the limelight of attention following the developments of pandemic parameters (Waitzberg et al. 2022). This increased focus materialized in Switzerland, where people accepted a popular initiative for strong nursing care at the end of 2021. Following the acceptance of this initiative, art. 117b of the Swiss Constitution was amended to require the Confederation and the cantons to recognize nursing as an important component of health care and to support it. Access to quality care must be also be guaranteed for everyone, and the Confederation and the cantons must ensure that there are enough qualified nurses.But does the adoption of this still rather abstract article really lead to the implementation of tangible policies in Swiss cantons? Drawing on the theoretical perspective of the Programmatic Action Framework (PAF) (Bandelow, Hornung, and Smyrl 2021, Hassenteufel and Genieys 2020), this article answers the question to what extent the actors and policies surrounding local health policy in two different cantons in Switzerland are an example of programmatic action and assesses the associated likelihood with which the reforms are to be adopted, to be implemented, and to last. Thereby, the article does not only provide empirical insights into post-pandemic care policymaking in Swiss local health policy, but also to the applicability of the PAF in the context of Swiss federalism. References Auener, S., D. Kroon, E. Wackers, S. V. Dulmen, and P. Jeurissen. 2020. "COVID-19: A Window of Opportunity for Positive Healthcare Reforms." Int J Health Policy Manag 9 (10):419-422. doi: 10.34172/ijhpm.2020.66. Bandelow, Nils C., Johanna Hornung, and Marc Smyrl. 2021. "Theoretical Foundations of the Programmatic Action Framework (PAF)." European Policy Analysis 7 (S1):14-27. doi: 10.1002/epa2.1083. Burger, Miriam M., Kaitlin E. Large, Yiqi Liu, Melissa C. Coyle, Cherish T. Gamanya, and Jean-François Etter. 2022. Future Strategic Priorities of the Swiss Decentralized Healthcare System: A COVID-19 Case Study. Epidemiologia 3 (2): 250-268. doi:10.3390/epidemiologia3020020. Hassenteufel, Patrick, and William Genieys. 2020. "The Programmatic Action Framework: An empirical assessment." European Policy Analysis 7 (S1):28-47. doi: 10.1002/epa2.1088. Waitzberg, Ruth, Cristina Hernández-Quevedo, Enrique Bernal-Delgado, Francisco Estupiñán-Romero, Ester Angulo-Pueyo, Mamas Theodorou, Marios Kantaris, Chrystala Charalambous, Elena Gabriel, Charalampos Economou, Daphne Kaitelidou, Olympia Konstantakopoulou, Lilian Venetia Vildiridi, Amit Meshulam, Antonio Giulio de Belvis, Alisha Morsella, Alexia Bezzina, Karen Vincenti, Gonçalo Figueiredo Augusto, Inês Fronteira, Jorge Simões, Marina Karanikolos, Gemma Williams, and Anna Maresso. 2022. "Early Health System Responses to the COVID-19 Pandemic in Mediterranean Countries: A Tale of Successes and Challenges." Health Policy 126 (5):465-475. doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.healthpol.2021.10.007.