In 2022, the World Health Organization (WHO) introduced a new online course aimed at strengthening the resilience of health systems in the face of public health challenges. The course, available through OpenWHO, covers both acute shocks, such as infectious disease outbreaks and environmental disasters, and chronic stressors, such as non-communicable diseases and antimicrobial resistance.
Course Overview
As the COVID-19 pandemic has shown, health systems around the world are under constant pressure from a range of acute and chronic public health threats. These challenges can severely impact the delivery of essential health services and pose obstacles to achieving the goals of Universal Health Coverage (UHC) and health security. WHO highlights the need for a renewed focus on building resilience by addressing critical vulnerabilities within health systems before, during and after shock events.
This course is aimed at public health policy decision makers and health service managers at national, local and community levels. It promotes integrated approaches and actions to strengthen health system resilience across policy development, planning, service delivery, monitoring and evaluation.
Course Structure and Certification
The course takes approximately five hours to complete and is divided into four modules.
“Introduction to health system resilience” covers the definition, importance and key characteristics of health system resilience. “Building health system resilience before a shock event” focuses on governance, intersectoral coordination and continuity planning. “Health system resilience during a shock event” covers maintaining essential health services and integrating resilience into incident management systems. “Health system recovery and resilience building” covers recovery steps and the importance of post-event evaluation.
Each module has a short learning session with exercises, case scenarios, discussion points, and quizzes. Participants who score 80% or above will be awarded a Certificate of Achievement, and participants who complete 80% of the course material will be awarded a Certificate of Participation. Additionally, participants who earn a Certificate of Achievement will be provided with a digital open badge.
Since the offline course material was adapted for virtual learning and made available on OpenWHO in 2022, 6,870 people have enrolled, attesting to the growing need for WHO’s support in this area.
This dedicated training package is part of WHO’s work programme on health systems resilience and critical public health capabilities, supported by the UHC Partnership and other partners including the Korea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA), the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) and the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO).
Learning outcomes
By the end of the course, participants will be able to:
Embed resilience attributes into health policies and plans, apply an integrated approach to building health system resilience, and promote the implementation of key resilience requirements.
For more course details and to register, please visit the course webpage.
About OpenWHO
Launched in 2017 by the Learning and Capacity Development Unit of the WHO Health Emergencies Programme, OpenWHO is a free, open access online learning platform covering a wide range of public health topics. Based on WHO guidance, it offers self-paced, multilingual courses designed for frontline responders, health workers, policy makers and anyone interested in public health. The platform provides low-bandwidth, adaptable and translatable resources. It also offers CPD-accredited courses for continuing professional development.
For more information, see the Publications, Newsletter and FAQ sections of our website. Join OpenWHO today to access high-quality learning programs and contribute to public health.
