Strengthening health system resilience 

The ESCORT project is working to design and identify tools to strengthen health system resilience. 

 

Health systems resilience refers to a health system’s ability to predict, detect, mitigate, withstand, manage, quickly recover from, adapt to, and learn from shocks and stresses (1,2,3,4). While stresses are chronic issues that can affect a health system such as climate change and an aging population (3,5,6), shocks have a sudden and acute onset and can include epidemics, natural disasters, cyberthreats, and geopolitical conflicts (1,3,7). Resilient health systems should be able to maintain quality routine health services during shocks and stresses and reduce their vulnerability to future shocks (2,4). The World Health Organisation (WHO) lists six attributes of health system resilience: awareness, mobilisation, self-mitigation, integration, diversity, and transformation. Respectively, these refer to the ability of health systems to recognise risks and capacities; to mobilise and coordinated the necessary resources and supports; the ability to make decisions to minimise the negative effects of, manage, and respond to risks and threats; the integration of public health and health system strengthening; the provision of services to meet population needs in all contexts; and the ability to apply lessons learnt from experiences with challenges and shocks to health systems (6). The WHO also outlines health system building blocks for building resilience (6).

 

 Of those, the ESCORT project is specifically aiming to address the following three types of building blocks: 

1) health information: surveillance, assessment and monitoring population health needs, risks, and health system performance and resilience

2) service delivery: delivery and continuity of care both on an individual and population-level

3) medicines, other medical products, technologies, and infrastructure: having the appropriate supplies, products, and infrastructure available when and where they are needed

 

The ESCORT project involves the design and the identification of tools to strengthen health systems resilience. The tools will include a resource management toolkit, an integrated toolkit for analysing patient diagnostics, a toolkit for training emergency response units in shock scenarios, a toolkit to estimate health and care service demands, wearable devices for remote patient monitoring, and multiple predictive assessment tools among others. These tools will specifically target to improve three attributes of health system resilience: awareness, mobilisation, and self-mitigation.