Prioritizing strategies for building the resilience of public health systems to disasters across multiple communities and countries

This study demonstrates how the United Nations Disaster Risk Reduction Public Health System Resilience Scorecard provides methods for identifying, ranking, and prioritizing a set of strategies for strengthening the resilience of public health systems. The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the urgent need to strengthen public health systems. In response, the UNDRR Public Health System Resilience Scorecard (Scorecard) was applied in workshops across multiple countries. The aim of this research was to explore the workshop findings to develop priority strategies for strengthening public health system resilience.

This tool could be scaled up and applied to a wider set of contexts through:

• Mapping the interconnectedness of health facilities and assets; 
• Developing plans to scale and deploy nonhospital staff to complement treatment and care;
• Expand surge capacity, improve the linking of public and private health systems to mitigate surge risks, and include multidisciplinary teams in public health activities.