A health promotion approach to emergency management: effective community engagement strategies from five cases.

Community engagement is crucial for controlling disease outbreak and mitigating natural and industrial disasters. The COVID-19 pandemic has reconfirmed the need to elevate community engagement to build equity, trust and sustained action in future health promotion preparedness strategies. Using the health promotion strategy of strengthening community action enhances the opportunity for better outcomes. There is, therefore, a need to improve our understanding of community engagement practices during crises, scale-up good community engagement initiatives, and improve and sustain people-centered approaches to emergency responses. This paper presents five case studies from the United States, Singapore, Sierra Leone, Kenya and South Africa that demonstrate the potential strengths that can be nurtured to build resilience in local communities to help mitigate the impact of disasters and emergencies. The case studies highlight the importance of co-developing relevant education and communication strategies, amplifying the role of community leaders, empowering community members to achieve shared goals, assessing and adapting to changing contexts, pre-planning and readiness for future emergencies and acknowledgement of historic context.

Integrating health into disaster risk reduction strategies: key considerations for success.

The human and financial costs of disasters are vast. In 2011, disasters were estimated to have cost $378 billion worldwide; disasters have affected 64% of the world's population since 1992. Consequently, disaster risk reduction strategies have become increasingly prominent on national and international policy agendas. However, the function of health in disaster risk reduction strategies often has been restricted to emergency response. To mitigate the effect of disasters on social and health development goals (such as risk reduction Millennium Development Goals) and increase resilience among at-risk populations, disaster strategies should assign the health sector a more all-encompassing, proactive role. We discuss proposed methods and concepts for mainstreaming health in disaster risk reduction and consider barriers faced by the health sector in this field.

Mapping the international health regulations monitoring and evaluation framework: an expert consultation, triangulation crosswalk and quantitative analysis.

The International Health Regulations Monitoring and Evaluation Framework (IHRMEF) includes four components regularly conducted by States Parties to measure the current status of International Health Regulations (IHR) 2005 core capacities and provide recommendations for strengthening these capacities. However, the four components are conducted independently of one another and have no systematic referral to each other before, during or after each process, despite being largely conducted by the same team, country and support organisations. This analysis sets out to identify ways in which IHRMEF components could work more synergistically to effectively measure the status of IHR core capacities, taking into account the country's priority risks. We developed a methodology to allow these independent components to communicate with each other, including expert consultation, a qualitative crosswalk analysis and a country-level quantitative analysis. The demonstrated results act as a proof of concept and illustrate a methodology to provide benefits across all four components before, during and after implementation.

Health Emergency and Disaster Risk Management Workforce Development Strategies: Delphi Consensus Study.

INTRODUCTION: Health workforce development is essential for achieving the goals of an effective health system, as well as establishing national Health Emergency and Disaster Risk Management (Health EDRM). STUDY OBJECTIVE: The objective of this Delphi consensus study was to identify strategic recommendations for strengthening the workforce for Health EDRM in low- and middle-income countries (LMIC) and high-income countries (HIC). METHODS: A total of 31 international experts were asked to rate the level of importance (one being strongly unimportant to seven being strongly important) for 46 statements that contain recommendations for strengthening the workforce for Health EDRM. The experts were divided into a LMIC group and an HIC group. There were three rounds of rating, and statements that did not reach consensus (SD ≥ 1.0) proceeded to the next round for further ranking. RESULTS: In total, 44 statements from the LMIC group and 34 statements from the HIC group attained consensus and achieved high mean scores for importance (higher than five out of seven). The components of the World Health Organization (WHO) Health EDRM Framework with the highest number of recommendations were "Human Resources" (n = 15), "Planning and Coordination" (n = 7), and "Community Capacities for Health EDRM" (n = 6) in the LMIC group. "Policies, Strategies, and Legislation" (n = 7) and "Human Resources" (n = 7) were the components with the most recommendations for the HIC group. CONCLUSION: The expert panel provided a comprehensive list of important and actionable strategic recommendations on workforce development for Health EDRM.

Progress towards the Development of Research Agenda and the Launch of Knowledge Hub: The WHO Thematic Platform for Health Emergency and Disaster Risk Management Research Network (Health EDRM RN).

In response to the increasing burden of recent health emergencies and disasters, the World Health Organization (WHO) and its partners established the WHO thematic platform for health emergency and disaster risk management research network (health EDRM RN) in 2016, with the purposes of promoting global research collaboration among various stakeholders and enhancing research activities that generate evidence to manage health risks associated with all types of emergencies and disasters. With the strong support and involvement of all WHO regional offices, the health EDRM RN now works with more than 200 global experts and partners to implement its purposes. The 1st and 2nd Core Group Meetings of the health EDRM RN were held on 17-18 October 2019 and 27 November 2020, respectively, to discuss the development of a global research agenda that the health EDRM RN will focus on facilitating, promoting, synthesizing and implementing, taking into account the emergence of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) (health EDRM RN research agenda). A focus of the meetings was the establishment of an online platform to share information and knowledge, including the databases that the health EDRM RN accumulates (WHO health EDRM knowledge hub). This paper presents a summary of the discussion results of the meetings.

Analyses of the performance of the Ebola virus disease alert management system in South Sudan: August 2018 to November 2019.

South Sudan implemented Ebola virus disease preparedness interventions aiming at preventing and rapidly containing any importation of the virus from the Democratic Republic of Congo starting from August 2018. One of these interventions was a surveillance system which included an Ebola alert management system. This study analyzed the performance of this system. A descriptive cross-sectional study of the Ebola virus disease alerts which were reported in South Sudan from August 2018 to November 2019 was conducted using both quantitative and qualitative methods. As of 30 November 2019, a total of 107 alerts had been detected in the country out of which 51 (47.7%) met the case definition and were investigated with blood samples collected for laboratory confirmation. Most (81%) of the investigated alerts were South Sudanese nationals. The alerts were identified by health workers (53.1%) at health facilities, at the community (20.4%) and by screeners at the points of entry (12.2%). Most of the investigated alerts were detected from the high-risk states of Gbudwe (46.9%), Jubek (16.3%) and Torit (10.2%). The investigated alerts commonly presented with fever, bleeding, headache and vomiting. The median timeliness for deployment of Rapid Response Team was less than one day and significantly different between the 6-month time periods (K-W = 7.7567; df = 2; p = 0.0024) from 2018 to 2019. Strengths of the alert management system included existence of a dedicated national alert hotline, case definition for alerts and rapid response teams while the weaknesses were occasional inability to access the alert toll-free hotline and lack of transport for deployment of the rapid response teams which often constrain quick response. This study demonstrates that the Ebola virus disease alert management system in South Sudan was fully functional despite the associated challenges and provides evidence to further improve Ebola preparedness in the country.

Health system preparedness in Pakistan for crisis management: a cross-sectional evaluation study.

BACKGROUND: The World Health Organization (WHO) has strongly advocated health systems' preparedness for effective management of crisis situations globally for more than two decades. Pakistan is known for its high vulnerability to hazards and lack of coping and adaptive capabilities. Health systems' preparedness for locales with such high-risk profile is essential, yet there is a dearth of studies addressing the status of such preparedness in the country. AIMS: This study aimed to assess the status of preparedness of health-system components for crisis management in the most disaster prone districts of Pakistan. METHODS: A purposive sample of 12 of the most disaster prone districts in two provinces of Pakistan was evaluated for preparedness using the WHO's toolkit for assessing health-system capacity for crisis management. Six core functions of the Health Systems Framework, with a total of 229 indicators, were evaluated at the district management as well as secondary and tertiary health care facilities level. Proportions of indicators prepared were calculated and preparedness was classified as Acceptable (≥ 66%), Partial (36-65%) or Inadequate (≤ 35%). RESULTS: Seventy-two percent, 95% Confidence Interval [46.0, 90.0] of indicators in these most vulnerable districts were evaluated as partially or inadequately prepared for appropriate management of crises. Even the highest scoring core function, Leadership and Governance was partially prepared with a score of 53.6% (52.4, 54.9). Process elements were found to be less prepared compared with structure components. CONCLUSIONS: Federal level strategic planning, implementation, management and follow-up aimed at ensuring health-systems' preparedness need to be reviewed and strengthened.

Hospital preparedness for disaster and mass casualty management in Pakistan: A cross-sectional evaluation study.

BACKGROUND: World Health Organization has advocated preemptive readiness of health systems to manage disas-trous events. Pakistan is known to be highly susceptible to disasters on the one hand and significantly lacking in coping ability on the other. Preparedness of health facilities in such locales is especially important, despite which there is little published evidence regarding hospitals' response capacity in Pakistan. METHODS: From 12 most disaster prone districts of the country, a purposive sample of 20 hospitals was assessed us-ing 51 indicators, scored as fully (2), partially (1), or not prepared (0). Two domains, disaster preparedness and mass casualty management, and five subdomains, networking, planning, staff-readiness, materials, and safety, were evalu-ated. Proportions of maximum possible scores achieved by an entity were categorized as acceptable (≥66 percent), par-tial (35-65 percent), or inadequate (<35 percent). RESULTS: Out of the 20 hospitals, 14 (70 percent) were secondary and 3 tertiary level facilities (30 percent). Overall, hospitals were partially prepared with a score of 54.0 percent, 95 percent confidence interval [52.3 percent, 54.7 percent]. Disaster preparedness, 55.2 percent [54.0, 57.0], was significantly better prepared than mass casualty management, 49.2 percent [46.8, 51.6], p < 0.001. Overall, facility safety was the least prepared among the subdomains, 38.3 per-cent [31.8, 44.8], while materials were the best, 75.9 percent [72.6, 79.3]. The least prepared subdomains were staff-readiness in Punjab, 52.1 percent [47.5, 56.8], and facility safety in KP, 29.2 percent [22.1, 36.4]. CONCLUSIONS: Hospitals' preparedness for disaster and mass casualty management is deficient in these most vulner-able districts of Pakistan. Improvement initiatives commensurate with locale vulnerabilities should be instituted.

Joint external evaluation of the International Health Regulation (2005) capacities: current status and lessons learnt in the WHO African region.

The International Health Regulations (IHR, 2005) are an essential vehicle for addressing global health security. Here, we report the IHR capacities in the WHO African from independent joint external evaluation (JEE). The JEE is a voluntary component of the IHR monitoring and evaluation framework. It evaluates IHR capacities in 19 technical areas in four broad themes: 'Prevent' (7 technical areas, 15 indicators); 'Detect' (4 technical areas, 13 indicators); 'Respond' (5 technical areas, 14 indicators), points of entry (PoE) and other IHR hazards (chemical and radiation) (3 technical areas, 6 indicators). The IHR capacity scores are graded from level 1 (no capacity) to level 5 (sustainable capacity). From February 2016 to March 2019, 40 of 47 WHO African region countries (81% coverage) evaluated their IHR capacities using the JEE tool. No country had the required IHR capacities. Under the theme 'Prevent', no country scored level 5 for 12 of 15 indicators. Over 80% of them scored level 1 or 2 for most indicators. For 'Detect', none scored level 5 for 12 of 13 indicators. However, many scored level 3 or 4 for several indicators. For 'Respond', none scored level 5 for 13 of 14 indicators, and less than 10% had a national multihazard public health emergency preparedness and response plan. For PoE and other IHR hazards, most countries scored level 1 or 2 and none scored level 5. Countries in the WHO African region are commended for embracing the JEE to assess their IHR capacities. However, major gaps have been identified. Urgent collective action is needed now to protect the WHO African region from health security threats.