Addressing the challenge requires decision makers and managers for individual and population health services to have the knowledge and skills to identify and apply an integrated approach to making health systems and services resilient to public health threats. This course explores key requirements for enabling health system resilience with an integrated systems approach.

Photo credits: WHO / L. Mackenzie

Health systems continuously face various forms of public health challenges ranging from acute shocks (such as infectious disease outbreaks. and environmental, climate-related and/or man-made disasters) to more chronic stressors (such as the burden of non-communicable diseases, antimicrobial resistance, or protracted humanitarian crises). In these contexts, health systems struggle to maintain their essential individual and population-based health services and recover from the impacts of the shock events. This predisposes to additional deterioration in health and socioeconomic outcomes with setbacks in achieving universal health coverage (UHC) and health security goals.

WHO recommends a renewed and increased focus on building resilience by addressing the critical gaps that make health systems vulnerable to public health threats. A combination of integrated approaches and actions are required to demonstrate health systems resilience attributes across policymaking, planning, service delivery, and monitoring and evaluation efforts. These include applying systems thinking and essential public health functions approaches, with improvements in quality of care and all hazards emergency risk management.