Handbook of Health System Resilience

In this Handbook, Steve Thomas and Padraic Fleming compile invaluable and original insights on the resilience of health systems in the face of shocks and crises, from economic and climate emergencies, to conflicts and pandemics. They examine how health system resilience has been conceptualised by scholars and applied in specific contexts, assessing different theoretical models for measuring and evaluating resilience, as well as highlighting the growing challenges facing health systems now and in the future.

The Handbook of Health System Resilience presents cutting-edge research from an international range of experts on crisis decision-making throughout healthcare. Chapter authors analyse the value of using ‘resilience’ as a theoretical framework, before delving into the durability of health systems in a variety of global case studies, including economic crises across Europe, conflicts in the Middle East, pandemics across the globe, and the climate crisis. Ultimately, the Handbook emphasises the importance of dealing with poor decision-making and austerity, the need to protect vulnerable groups, and the significance of capacity-building to deal with future crises.

This dynamic Handbook is a vital resource for students and scholars of public policy, health, and economics. It will also prove invaluable to health system analysts, as well as those within governments who are responsible for public health and crisis decision-making.

Edited by Steve Thomas, Edward Kennedy Professor of Health Policy and Management and Padraic Fleming, Research Fellow, Centre for Health Policy and Management, School of Medicine, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland