Objective: To construct an evaluation index system to assess the response capacity of universities to public health emergencies, so as to provide a basis for improvements the response capacity. Methods: In November 2019, in order to develop an evaluation system based on literature review and expert discussions, 15 experts were invited to conduct a subjective evaluation used hierarchical analysis. The objective evaluation was conducted in 120 universities in Jiangsu Province used the inverse entropy weighting method, and the final evaluation employed the joint subjective and objective weighting method. Results: The indicator system consisted of four primary indicators, nine secondary indicators, 32 tertiary indicators and 67 quaternary indicators. The analysis of the combined weighting method showed that the primary indicators, in descending order, included incident handling capability ( 0.666 ), incident detection capability (0.203), prior preparation capability (0.101) and post event recovery capability ( 0.031 ). The top three secondary indicator weights were emergency response (0.480), monitoring and reporting (0.203) and command and coordination (0.151). The results of the evaluation of the consistency indicators showed that the expert authority coefficient was 0.909 and the Kendall s W coordination coefficient was 0.836 ( P <0.01), with all consistency scale values < 0.1. Conclusion The evaluation system is highly scientific and credible, and provides basis for evaluating the response capability of universities to public health emergencies.