Health Systems Resilience

Health systems need to continue functioning and providing essential health services, even when they experience challenges that threaten their ability to do so. Resilience describes the ability for health systems to manage change when they are shocked, so that essential functions are maintained. The capacity to change ranges from absorbing the shock using existing resources to fundamentally reorganizing the system. Resilience is needed proactively to prepare and plan for shocks, during a shock to respond to the event, and to learn from a shock after it ends. Strengthening the whole system can help to build resilience, such as strengthening the ways that actors and groups in the system interact. Understanding the processes that support change in a system will help us understand how to build resilience.