The National Action Plan for Health Security (NAPHS) tool is an excel-based application with which countries can capture all their planned strategic actions and detailed activities based on national assessment results. This specific version has been developed for use in European Union/European Economic Area (EU/EEA) countries only, and in countries that want to develop an action plan addressing the proposed recommendations of an assessment, being either an International Health Regulations (IHR) assessment (i.e. States Parties Self-Assessment Annual Report/Joint External Evaluation (SPAR/JEE)) or an Article 8 Assessment of prevention, preparedness and response planning of the EU Regulation (2022/2371) on serious cross-border threats to health.

This comprehensive, practical and easy to use tool is applicable to be used for developing both 5-year strategic action plans as well as 12–24 month operational plans. Timelines, responsibilities, budget and costing; need for technical assistance; and other essential planning considerations can also be documented in the tool. The tool is automatically structured around the IHR/PHEPA technical areas/indicators to facilitate the monitoring and evaluation process and easily track implementation status per activity level. A dashboard can be automatically produced based on the information provided in the plan, which can be helpful to provide an overview of the plan and identify any bottlenecks for high-level decision-makers’ consideration.

For non EU/EEA countries or countries that want to use the original WHO NAPHS tool, this can be found on the WHO headquarters’ NAPHS webpage.