The concept of resilience and its practical application have gained popularity among healthcare analysts and policymakers. However, confusion persists over how to measure and strengthen resilience. Literature review and expert interviews by the GLC4HSR brought out the need for a holistic health systems assessment framework and indicators that go beyond healthcare, to include social resilience too.
Effective surveillance systems in one country can influence global disease detection, response, and health security at the global level. During the pandemic, many countries were unable to afford comprehensive surveillance, thus impacting disease control. An effective approach that can assess how well the surveillance systems are working to identify various disease threats and shifting patterns can be devised to address these issues.
Health shocks induce acute surges in demand for healthcare services. Resilient health systems should be able to meet these surges without affecting essential healthcare services. The COVID-19 pandemic induced unique demands on health systems across the world. An understanding how systems responded effectively will offer unique learnings that can be incorporated into health systems as they aim to become more resilient.
Evolving health systems architecture and its governance, the role of various actors in general, and that of governments (global, national, and subnational) in particular are critical in shaping the response of a health system during both normal times and shocks. The search of reports of various committees, commissions, and research groups that looked at the performance of governments during the current pandemic to unearth structural and functional gaps is being undertaken to bring out key lessons from the ongoing pandemic and potential corrective actions toward building back stronger and more resilient health systems.
Health financing strategies at all levels of the system play a critical role in ensuring the availability of funds through efficient revenue raising, funds pools, and purchasing for healthcare-related goods and services. Globally, there exist multiple health system financing mechanisms and models that played a crucial role in protecting people during health shocks. Collating these learnings and sharing it across the globe is critical. The research at GLC4HSR has helped collate a preliminary list of topics, solutions and approaches that can potentially help achieve specific outputs.
The GLC4HSR welcomes association with multiple stakeholders working towards strengthening health and other social systems.
