ACCESS Health International supported by The Rockefeller Foundation launch The Global Learning Collaborative for Health Systems Resilience (GLC4HSR)
First of its kind, cross-regional network aimed at facilitating collaborative learning towards building health systems resilience.
The collaborative will kick-off exchange and learning across South Asia, South-East Asia and East Asia regions
On March 11, 2022, the second anniversary of the day the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic, ACCESS Health International, health systems think tank, advisory group, and implementation partner with the support of The Rockefeller Foundation launched the Global Learning Collaborative for Health Systems Resilience (GLC4HSR). The GLC4HSR is a global community of health systems experts and actors who co-develop and share knowledge and best practices towards building resilience and preparedness of health systems against pandemics and other health and social crises.
GLC4HSR is a first of its kind multi-regional, multi-sectoral initiative with a vision to facilitate synergistic exchange of knowledge between regions. It is a cross-discipline network of technical experts, practitioners, and health policy actors from both public and private sectors. It brings together national and subnational governments, regional and global health bodies, the private healthcare industry, academic and research institutes, and development agencies.
In the aftermath of COVID-19, countries are analysing and evaluating their response to the pandemic. Policymakers and practitioners are assessing the current gaps and opportunities to better detect and manage public health emergencies. In doing so, collaborative approach to learning has the potential to yield greater insight for future policy action. Reciprocal, peer to peer learning can provide a solid ground on which knowledge is shared, adapted, and disseminated in an efficient manner. On this premise, the GLC4HSR was envisaged to provide a platform to discuss, debate and formulate strategies to safeguard all people against future crises. GLC4HSR members gain access to resources and tools that can be applied to help health systems maintain core functions during shocks and crises.
The findings of early research done by the GLC4HSR reveal that while the existing HSR frameworks assess most of the problems inherent to the health systems, many important areas such as the need for genomic surveillance, need for use of scientific studies, and enhanced use of data for predictions need much more focus. Research finds that the Global Health Security Index rankings of countries did not tally with the actual responses and outcomes during the current pandemic, highlighting the limitations of existing assessment frameworks. In light of the shock that the world has faced, there is a need to redefine the objectives of health systems not just to meet health needs during normal times but also during crisis times. Existing assessment frameworks and indicators need to be reworked. Even the existing boundary of health systems be expanded to include relevant social systems. GLC will encourage free dialogue around these issues.
The GLC4HSR will be launched amid discussions on the need for resilience in health systems and how the Collaborative will enable this dialogue. The speakers at the launch include global health leaders such as Shri Dr K. Madan Gopal, Senior Consultant (Health), NITI Aayog, Dr. Aida Karazhanova Economic Affairs Officer at UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific, Dr. Ming Xu, Director, Department of Global Health, Peking University School of Public Health, Dr. Kotaro Tamura, Adjunct Professor, Executive Education, LKY School of National University of Singapore and Mr. Stephan Nachuk Deputy Director, Health Systems Design, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, India
“Many high-level committees, commissions, and global health academic leaders have brought out high level lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic. However, transformative change to stronger and resilient health systems can only happen through systems-wide collaborative learning involving households, communities, public health professionals, community health workers, healthcare providers, payers, health systems leadership, health technology producers, and health systems researchers and professionals. GLC4HSR aims to provide a platform for people and institutions across health and social systems to undertake crosscountry and intra-country collaborative learning,” said Dr. Krishna Reddy Nallamalla, Regional Director, South Asia, ACCESS Health International.
The Collaborative has received catalytic funding from The Rockefeller Foundation. ACCESS Health International serves as secretariat to establish the collaborative platform to convene government, academic, non-profit and private members who are committed to building resilient health systems. “In the last two years, the pandemic has brought the need of resilient health systems to the fore. Understanding coronavirus and developing solutions to tackle it brought the global healthcare community together and gave all of us the opportunity to learn from each other and strengthen our systems – not just to treat but to prevent health crises altogether. In the similar spirit, we are proud to support ACCESS Health International to form GLC4HSR to enable a strong response towards securing a healthy future,” said Deepali Khanna, Managing Director, Asia Regional Office, The Rockefeller Foundation