Health System Resilience: A Conceptual Review

The health sys tem consis ts of individuals, groups and organizations involved in policy making, financing, generating resources and providing health services with the aim of promoting, res toring and maintaining people health. The health sys tem mus t be resilient to shocks and crises. Concepts related to health sys tem resilience are complex and ambiguous. This s tudy aimed to explain the concepts, attributes, antecedents, and consequences of the health sys tem resilience.

This research was conducted in the period of February to March 2021 using the conceptual review method. All articles related to health sys tem resilience indexed in Medline, Scopus, Web of science, Science Direct, Iran Medex, Magiran, and SID databases and Google and Google scholar search engines between 2005 and 2020 were extracted, assessed and reviewed. Finally, 76 articles were selected and analyzed.

Health sys tem resilience is “the ability, capability and capacity of the health sys tem to predict, prevent, prepare, absorb, adapt and transform when exposed to shocks and s tresses and deliver routine health services continuously during the crisis management”. Adaptation, learning, response, change, preparedness, sus tainability, communication, prediction, absorption and withs tanding are the main elements of the health sys tem resilience. A model including six building blocks and three outcomes were developed for health sys tem resilience and a checklis t was developed to evaluate the resilience of the health sys tem using these 9 dimentions and 75 items.

Resilience is a multidimensional concept that has changed over time. It is necessary to s trengthen the resilience of the health sys tem’s six building blocks to be able to improve health sys tem resilience.