Drawing light from the pandemic: Rethinking strategies for health policy and beyond.

The COVID-19 pandemic is a catastrophe. It was also preventable. The potential impacts of a novel pathogen were foreseen and for decades scientists and commentators around the world warned of the threat. Most governments and global institutions failed to heed the warnings or to pay enough attention to risks emerging at the interface of human, animal, and environmental health. We were not ready for COVID-19, and people, economies, and governments around the world have suffered as a result. We must learn from these experiences now and implement transformational changes so that we can prevent future crises, and if and when emergencies do emerge, we can respond in more timely, robust and equitable ways, and minimize immediate and longer-term impacts. In 2020-21 the Pan-European Commission on Health and Sustainable Development assessed the challenges posed by COVID-19 in the WHO European region and the lessons from the response. The Commissioners have addressed health in its entirety, analyzing the interactions between health and sustainable development and considering how other policy priorities can contribute to achieving both. The Commission's final report makes a series of policy recommendations that are evidence-informed and above all actionable. Adopting them would achieve seven key objectives and help build truly sustainable health systems and fairer societies.

‘Build forward better’ must include heavy investment in government capacities to engage with communities and civil society

Civil society and community groups are active players in the COVID-19 response, providing support, advice and information where government reach is poor. Yet most governments have not managed to bring civil society’s perspectives, insights, and experiences into the COVID-19 response in a systematic way. If the world is to ‘build forward better’, more regular and systematised government-civil society engagement will need to underpin a shifttowards more inclusive health governance. Doing so successfully will require heavy investments in capacity-building for government actors to value and feel comfortable managing and sustaining participatory spaces and in skills to bring forward the kind of governance needed to build resilience against the next pandemic.

Civil society and health: contributions and potential

Civil society organizations (CSOs) can make a vital contribution to public health and health systems, but harnessing their potential is complex in a Europe where government–CSO relations vary so profoundly. This study is intended to outline some of the challenges and assist policy-makers in furthering their understanding of the part CSOs can play in tandem and alongside government. To this end it analyses existing evidence and draws on a set of seven thematic chapters and six mini case studies. They examine experiences from Austria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Belgium, Cyprus, Finland, Germany, Malta, the Netherlands, Poland, the Russian Federation, Slovenia, Turkey and the European Union and make use of a single assessment framework to understand the diverse contexts in which CSOs operate. The evidence shows that CSOs are ubiquitous, varied and (typically) beneficial. The topics covered in this study reflect such diversity of aims and means: anti-tobacco advocacy, food banks, refugee health, HIV/AIDS prevention, and social partnership. CSOs make a substantial contribution to public health and health systems with regards to policy development, service delivery and governance. This includes evidence provision, advocacy, mobilization, consensus building, provision of medical services and of services related to the social determinants of health, standard setting, self-regulation and fostering social partnership. Engaging successfully with CSOs means governments making use of adequate tools and creating contexts conducive to collaboration. This book guides policy-makers working with CSOs and helps avoid some potential pitfalls. The editors outline a practical framework for such collaboration which suggests identifying key CSOs in a given area; clarifying why there should be engagement with civil society; being realistic as to what CSOs can or will achieve; and an understanding of how CSOs can be helped to deliver.