Objective To establish an index system to evaluate the public health security of the province and provide a reference for the government to promote the construction of a public health security system.

Methods Based on the decision-making arrangements and relevant policies issued by the national and provincial governments to promote public health security, a preliminary framework for the evaluation index system of public health security was established through literature review and brainstorming methods. The Delphi method was used to construct the evaluation index system of public health security, and finally, the analytical hierarchy process and percentile weight method were used to calculate the weight coefficients of the indicators.

Results A total of 21 experts participated in two rounds of consultation, and the positive coefficients of the two rounds of expert consultation were 96.9% and 100%. The expert authority coefficients of the two rounds of first-level indicators were 0.76 and 0.81. The coordination coefficients of expert opinions were divided into two aspects: importance and applicability. The coordination coefficients of the first round were 0.180 and 0.194, and those of the second round were 0.334 and 0.316, respectively (all P<0.05), indicating good coordination of expert opinions. After two rounds of expert consultation, a public health security evaluation index system was established. This index system includes six first-level indicators, including policy guarantee, resource support, healthy environment, surveillance and early warning, emergency response, and vulnerable population, and 66 second-level indicators. The weights of the first-level indicators ranged from 0.101 2 to 0.275 7, and the weights of the second-level indicators ranged from 0.008 2 to 0.026 7.

Conclusions The established public health security evaluation index system can serve as a reference for the government to evaluate the level of public health security and analyze its weak points, and promote the construction of the public health security system nationwide.