**2. Coordination**

Coordination can be simply defined as the act of making different people or things work together for a goal or effect [4]. Coordination has been defined in terms of positive and negative. Negative coordination is when decisions are made in one public health agency considering decision of other agencies, while attempting to avoid conflict. Positive coordination involves agencies not focusing on conflicts, but on finding ways to work together in a manner that each agency benefits [5]. Coordination problems usually are due to redundancies and gaps in services across agencies. Positive coordination is preferred because it results in better services.

Strategic coordination is what is needed for public health response. Strategic coordination involves countries through their public health agencies working together based on strategic goals. Examples of such goals can be found in the CDCs Public Health Emergency Preparedness and Response Capabilities developed as National Standards for State, Local, Tribal, and Territorial Public Health [6]. Another is the World Health Organization's (WHO) Joint Evaluation Tool as a mechanism to assess country capacity to implement the International Health Regulations as mandated by the 48th World Health Assembly [7]. A common feature of these goals is to move toward standardization of practices across all jurisdictions for activities such as detecting, preparing and responding to threats, improving the health status of a population, delivering COVID-19 vaccines to the population, or creating a coordinated public health response program [8].

Coordination levels have been delineated in the form of a scale from total independence of top-level decision makers to a very coordinated governmental strategy [9]. It is not common for agencies to be at the top level of the coordination scale, but it does illustrate possible coordinating goals.
