Responding to Mpox: Communities, Communication, and Infrastructures

The 2022 Mpox outbreak saw community organisations and sexual health services rise to the challenge of rapidly responding to a public health emergency.

Nevertheless, the experience showed that successfully responding to an outbreak is often dependent on preparedness, planning, and existing infrastructure, and success in future outbreaks and scenarios may depend on this work being undertaken now.

This report, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), sets out key findings about the successes and challenges in the response to Mpox in the UK and internationally and makes research-based policy recommendations for future similar contexts. These include suggesting that:

Collaborative relationships with community organisations should be proactively fostered before an outbreak occurs, to build preparedness and resilience; and that

Governments should appreciate and appropriately resource social and medical infrastructure, including sexual health services, as these are key actors in responding to an outbreak such as Mpox.

Deploying successful interventions such as co-producing messaging with and for affected communities; and

Targeting support to those facing additional barriers to accessing healthcare.