The Global Learning Collaborative for Health Systems Resilience (GLC4HSR) has completed one year since it started being built. After six months of gestation and ground work, the GLC4HSR was born on March 11, 2022. Since its launch, the GLC4HSR has grown to 43 members from 13 countries. It has 12 experienced technical advisors from across the globe to guide and mentor the Collaborative in its design and evolution. The members and advisors represent diverse fields of health systems, bringing with them rich theoretical and practical experience and expertise.

The GLC4HSR  is a voluntary collaborative of health systems stakeholders across the globe with the purpose of knowledge co-creation and reciprocal learning towards building strong and resilient health systems to prevent and be prepared for future pandemics and other health crises. It undertakes learning journeys around various themes of mutual interest of its members, to bring out learnings that inform global, national, and subnational health policies and administrators, in their strategic and operational plans, to strengthen health systems and make them resilient against future pandemics and other health shocks.

Members play various roles based on their interest and expertise. They advise on and facilitate thematic work, participate in special interest group discussions, be speakers, provide information as an expert, share practical wisdom from experience and undertake pilots to test learnings.

So far, the GLC4HSR has held one peer to peer learning meeting (with 130 plus participants across the world), one members network meeting, and two Technical Advisory Group meetings. The Members’ Portal, built upon the GLC4HSR website is an exhaustive online repository of literature related to health systems resilience. The portal also hosts a Learning Management platform where members come together for virtual learning sessions and other opportunities for interaction.

As the GLC4HSR attracts more members, it will grow into national and sub-national chapters to usher in a culture of learning health systems. Insights are drawn from the ground level will be taken to the top and vice versa. Moreover, insights drawn across countries will be made actionable in a given local context.

The learning journey began with the first theme on “health systems resilience” – its definitions and its assessment frameworks. The process is expected to evolve a unified assessment framework and a tool to assess health systems resilience that can be pilot tested at global, national, and subnational levels. It will also bring out learning briefs and presentations for the members, briefs to inform policymakers and administrators, and papers for publication in peer-reviewed journals.  The overarching theme will then branch out into sub-themes on individual health system building blocks to explore more deeply. A beginning has been made on the sub-theme of “leadership and governance” and its role in building resilience across health systems. Work on sub-themes around ‘health finance’, ‘health goods’, ‘health information’, ‘healthcare services’, and ‘health workforce’ will begin shortly as a part of the broader theme of ‘health systems resilience’. 

If you are interested in joining the GLC4HSR or knowing more about the initiative, please write to us at info@glc4hsr.org.