360° Resilience : A Guide to Prepare the Caribbean for a New Generation of Shocks – Health Systems Resilience in the Caribbean (English)

This paper aims to analyze health system resilience (HSR) capacities in the Caribbean and suggests priority actions for strengthening. As there has been limited guidance to date on assessing HSR in the Caribbean, the specific objectives for this paper are to develop and apply a conceptual framework for HSR and to categorize HSR capacities in the region. The presented conceptual framework, which aims to align the World Health Organization's (WHO's) six building blocks of a health system to previously identified HSR capacities (that is, absorptive, adaptive, and transformative capacities) was applied to analyze selected historical health system responses to shocks in the region. Additionally, the conceptual framework was used to develop a traffic light system for classifying national HSR capacity. This analysis should provide guidance to policymakers and other health sector stakeholders on assessing national HSR capacities, as well as provide targets for strengthening HSR capacities in the Caribbean. This paper will focus mainly on 13 Caribbean countries, which were selected based on the ease of information availability and accessibility. Section one gives introduction. Section two presents health outcomes, health systems, and vulnerability to shocks. Section three presents health system resilience conceptual framework. Section four details HSR experiences in the Caribbean. Section five presents assessing HSR in the Caribbean. Section six gives categorizing national HSR capacity: the traffic light system and priority recommendations.