Health systems resilience: is it time to revisit resilience after COVID-19?

Marco Antonio Catussi Paschoalotto; Eduardo Alves Lazzari; Rudi Rocha; Adriano Massuda; Marcia C Castro

doi:10.1016/j.socscimed.2023.115716

Health systems resilience: is it time to revisit resilience after COVID-19?

Soc Sci Med. 2023 Mar:320:115716. doi: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2023.115716. Epub 2023 Jan 20.

Authors

Marco Antonio Catussi Paschoalotto¹, Eduardo Alves Lazzari², Rudi Rocha³, Adriano Massuda³, Marcia C Castro⁴

Affiliations

¹ David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies, Harvard University, USA; Sao Paulo School of Business Administration, Fundação Getúlio Vargas, Brazil. Electronic address: marco.paschoalotto@fgv.edu.br.
² David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies, Harvard University, USA; Sao Paulo School of Business Administration, Fundação Getúlio Vargas, Brazil.
³ Sao Paulo School of Business Administration, Fundação Getúlio Vargas, Brazil.
⁴ Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Harvard University, USA.

Abstract

The concept of health system resilience has been challenged by the COVID-19 pandemic. Even well-established health systems, considered resilient, collapsed during the pandemic. To revisit the concept of resilience two years and a half after the initial impact of COVID-19, we conducted a qualitative study with 26 international experts in health systems to explore their views on concepts, stages, analytical frameworks, and implementation from a comparative perspective of high- and low-and-middle-income countries (HICs and LMICs). The interview guide was informed by a comprehensive literature review, and all interviewees had practice and academic expertise in some of the largest health systems in the world. Results show that the pandemic did modify experts' views on various aspects of health system resilience, which we summarize and propose as refinements to the current understanding of health systems resilience.

Keywords: Covid-19; Framework; Health system resilience; Health systems; Implementation.

Publication types

Review
Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

COVID-19* / epidemiology
Developing Countries
Government Programs
Humans
Organizations
Pandemics