15 Months of the GLC4HSR: A Collective Endeavour to Build Future-ready Health Systems

Infections continue to be among the leading causes of deaths in the world despite the advancements in modern medicine. Frequent global outbreaks of diseases are threatening people’s health and social security like never before. A common story in the lives of those affected by the recent COVID-19 pandemic is that of fragile healthcare delivery systems which failed to deliver when they were most needed. The loss of lives and livelihoods is testimony to the ill preparedness of health systems across the globe.

Strengthening our response to health shocks demands concerted efforts to learn continuously from the systemic gaps that came to the fore and the adaptive innovations that emerged to counter them. While several global and regional initiatives are underway to learn from and to curb the impact of health shocks, these efforts could benefit from a common platform for collaboration and cross learning. Thus, was born the GLC4HSR.

The Global Learning Collaborative for Health Systems Resilience is a multi-country platform that facilitates practical and reciprocal knowledge sharing and the co-creation of effective health systems resilience strategies. It does so by bringing together people and institutions from diverse geographies to nurture a culture of learning health systems towards achieving transformation. ACCESS Health International, with initial financial support from The Rockefeller Foundation, is the current global secretariat of the GLC4HSR.

Since its inception in September 2021 and its official launch in March 2022, the GLC4HSR network has onboarded 40 esteemed members and 12 highly regarded technical advisors from across 15 countries. These are health systems experts, practitioners, and policymakers who share a common vision to build back better, more resilient, health systems.

The core approach of the GLC4HSR relies on knowledge pooling, processing, presenting, and practicing to improve performance on an ongoing basis. This is the same approach that underlies learning organizations, systems, and cultures. The GLC4HSR follows a unique “bottom—up” approach to a multi-functional, multi-regional learning journey. It aims at strengthening health systems down to the district level through pilots. These pilots allow for practical application of theoretical frameworks.

Among the current thematic areas of focus of the GLC4HSR are disease surveillance, health systems resilience, leadership and governance for health systems resilience, healthcare provisioning, and healthcare financing. Of the many learning journeys underway at the GLC4HSR, is the development of a health systems assessment framework and of indicators to measure health systems efficiency. The draft framework was created after literature review, expert consultations, and focused group discussions. A working group of interested professionals is currently reviewing and finalizing the framework and indicators that can be used for piloting in select countries.

The learning journey that the GLC4HSR has embarked upon is a long one. There is much distance to cover before the platform becomes truly global. The mission is to organize into 10 national chapters, have representation from 100 nations, and onboard 1000 formal members in the next five years.  In doing so, the Collaborative works towards its vision of being the creator, curator, and conduit of knowledge and learnings to nurture health systems across the globe.