Image Credit Left – Will Swanson IRC
‘Health Systems Resilience: A Systems Analysis’ was a ReBUILD affiliate research project, delivered by the Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, the School of Public Health, University of the Western Cape and Queen Margaret University.
It applied a systems dynamics approach to understanding, predicting and identifying mechanisms that influence the resilience of health systems in contexts of adversity.
The study examined the resilience of the health systems in three regions affected by recent conflict – Cote d’Ivoire, northern Nigeria and Eastern Cape province of South Africa.
In these case studies, conflict and disruption – population migration, transport restrictions, and fear and uncertainty amongst both health service users and workers – were found to have a significant impact on both access to and provision of health services. However, the health systems showed significant resilience in some important areas, and key lessons emerged that could inform other contexts facing similar conflict-related challenges.
Key pieces relating to this health systems resilience work include:
Members of the ReBUILD team built on this work in projects with UNWRA (see Zamal et al, Health system resilience in the face of crisis: analyzing the challenges, strategies and capacities for UNRWA in Syria). It also fed into the thinking that underpins the ReBUILD for Resilience programme, and a brief that Sophie Witter presented to DfID/FCDO in spring 2020.
There’s more on the backgrounds to and outputs from each of ReBUILD’s research themes here: