Strategic Objective 3: Standard Setting & Quality Assurance

Session Description:

The devastation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic has been a catalyst for action in strengthening global, national, and sub-national capacities. The global architecture for health emergency preparedness, prevention, response, and resilience (HEPR) outlines five interlinked systems (the 5 Cs) that are critical for strengthening our capacities to respond effectively to the ever-increasing scale of health emergencies: collaborative surveillance, community protection, safe and scalable care, access to countermeasures and emergency coordination.

Emergency coordination is critical as it enables all other systems (Cs) to fully deliver their capabilities at all levels and across all hazards. Effective emergency coordination requires the orchestrated achievement of three elements: health emergency alert and response coordination, health emergency preparedness, readiness and resilience and strengthened workforce capacities for health emergencies.

The backbone of all emergency operations is the emergency, unfortunately, recent health emergencies have revealed gaps in such a critical capacity. The overcoming of such gaps requires the development and strengthening of three components: the public health and emergency workforce, the health emergency corps, the connected emergency leadership, and the interoperable surge deployment.

Drawing on case studies and experience, this session aims to explore the enabling factors for building and deploying sustainable, high quality and interoperable surge capacities. It will also discuss the concept of interoperability within various surge capacities.