About Health Emergency Preparedness Collaborative

The COVID-19 pandemic has driven home the importance of health emergency and pandemic preparedness. Although this remains key, countries continue to struggle with conceptual (e.g., what constitutes health emergency preparedness versus what constitutes more generalized health system strengthening) and operational challenges (e.g., how to build effective and well-prioritized health emergency preparedness components into broader health planning efforts and particularly, into primary health care (PHC) systems), while actualizing respective health emergency and pandemic preparedness. For palpable impact, these efforts must not be conducted in isolation, but rather, designed and implemented in concert with related agendas in health systems as well as in crisis preparedness and response efforts.

It has become more apparent that at the country level, decision-makers are struggling with how to address this critical need while also attending to other health imperatives, such as improving PHC and strengthening health systems overall to advance universal health coverage (UHC) under the ambit of creating resilient health systems, which can provide the full range of routine and emergency health services.

The Health Emergency Preparedness Collaborative is designed to help countries share challenges, lessons and innovations, and jointly address their needs. With facilitation by multiple teams from around the World Bank, the JLN Health Financing Technical Initiative and Resolve to Save Lives, the collaborative brings together a group of frontline practitioners and country representatives from 18 countries namely: Bhutan, Cambodia, Ethiopia, Ghana, Indonesia, Kenya, Lao PDR, Lebanon, Liberia, Malawi, Malaysia, Nigeria, Pakistan, Philippines, Solomon Islands, Tajikistan, Togo and Zambia.

Collaborative members will engage in joint learning and knowledge exchange to improve the design and implementation of their health emergency preparedness programs through cross-country engagements. The facilitation team may also draw upon experts from other entities as well as policymakers from outside JLN countries, as deemed appropriate.

A virtual launch of the Collaborative took place via sessions held in October and November of 2023. The first in-person meeting of the Collaborative was held in Washington DC in April 2024. The virtual and in-person engagements so far have identified the themes of Governance, Surveillance and data systems and Financing as the areas of focus of the Collaborative’s work. Moving forward the Collaborative members will start outlining knowledge product(s) under the identified themes and work on co-production in the coming 12-18 months.

• Global Research and Innovation for Health Emergencies.

• Frontiers in Public Health Special Collection on Health Systems Recovery in the Context of COVID-19 and Protracted Conflict