Strategic Action Framework for Strengthening Community Engagement and Resilience to Health Emergencies in the WHO South-East Asia Region (2025–2029)
Overview
The Strategic Action Framework for Strengthening Community Engagement and Resilience to Health Emergencies in the WHO South-East Asia Region (2025–2029) has been developed through multiple rounds of consultation with technical experts from Member States of the South-East (SE) Asia Region. Consultations were also held with all three levels of WHO and partner agencies. In addition, and comprehensive literature reviews were conducted of reports, publications, research papers, regional and global guidance on health security and recommendations from the experience of managing the COVID 19 pandemic and other recent emergencies.
The wide range of impacts of health emergencies necessitate a whole-of-society approach and multisectoral engagement to mitigate and manage them. Lessons learnt from the COVID 19 pandemic, identified the critical role of communities in all stages of the emergency management cycle. Hence, community engagement and resilience are identified as a key core health security subsystem in the Regional Strategic Roadmap on health security and health system resilience for emergencies 2023– 2027 of the WHO South East Asia Region which currently guides the health security priorities of all key stakeholders in the region.
The Strategic Action Framework for Strengthening Community Engagement and Resilience to Health Emergencies in the WHO South-East Asia Region (2025–2029) is an advancement and a detailing of the community engagement and resilience component of the Regional Strategic Roadmap that sets forth the operational vision for the strategic investments, approaches and priority actions need to strengthen community centered approaches to managing health emergency risks and health system resilience in the WHO South East Asia Region.
The objectives of this Framework are to guide both national and regional actions and priority areas of investments for community-centred health emergency risk management, aligned to global and regional health security frameworks and guidance, and tailored to the unique context and need within the WHO SE Asia Region.
The important guiding principles of community-centredness; equity, inclusivity and coherence; adaptability; responsiveness; and national ownership and leadership that underpin and are applicable to all the actions and priority areas of investments are outlined in the Framework:
The framework consists of two sections:
Part A: country level actions including priority areas for investment and system enablers required to support effective implementation of actions; and
Part B: regional initiatives and investments to support country level actions.
The following six priority areas are identified in the Framework for investment to strengthen community engagement and resilience (CER) to health emergencies in the WHO SE Asia Region:
- Establish sustainable inclusive governance mechanisms.
- Expand and empower the community workforce.
- Define and establish mechanisms for the collection and use of social, cultural and behavioural evidence and data for evidence-based action.
- Strengthen community resilience to infodemics.
- Ensure equity, access and inclusion of vulnerable and marginalized groups.
- Monitor, evaluate and document lessons learned and best practices for community-centred health emergency and disaster risk management.
Evidence based actions are proposed for each priority area for investment in the two phases - prevention and preparedness, and response and recovery of the emergency risk management cycle. In addition, investments to strengthen system enablers such as governance, legislation, financing, technical and human resources and capacity building, which are aligned to the health system building blocks are also set forth to support implementation of the six priority areas for investment to strengthen CER to health emergencies. Benchmark actions are proposed for each system enabler, to be prioritized for implementation in three stages: first two years, third and fourth years and the fifth and final year of the tenure of the Framework.
While many critical regional initiatives and investments are needed to support and sustain the country level actions, the following three have been prioritized based on consensus achieved during the stakeholder consultations:
- Alliance for infodemic intelligence and management
- Community of practice and platform for community engagement and resilience
- Regional technical advisory committee for advancing the work of community-centred approaches to health emergencies and disaster risk management.
