Biological/Pandemic Hazards

For the past decades within the health sector, risk reduction and emergency preparedness against biological hazards have offered important insights to illustrate the usefulness and applicability of the “all hazard approach” to community resilience. The Health Emergency and Disaster Risk Management (Health EDRM) framework (WHO, Health emergency and disaster risk management framework, World Health Organization, Geneva, 2019) is the latest WHO policy and research paradigm adopting the “all hazard” approach. It uses policies and actions in medicine and public health to reduce health-related disaster risks. It also highlights the core building blocks for resilience of individual well-being and population health. By focusing on proactive preventive actions, the framework also argues for a comprehensive multidisciplinary approach in analysing “all hazard” risks within the emergency management cycle, and advocates for an “all hazard” planning and risk reduction approach. Numerous global health emergencies, biological hazards and major crises have seriously affected community health outcomes in a diverse and complex manner (e.g. Ebola, H1N5, SARS, MERS and recently COVID-19 pandemic). These have revealed the technical limitations and practical challenges in “all hazard approach” conceptualization and planning, despite its conceptual merits. There appears to be a lack of relevant research enquiries in evidence-based effectiveness of health risk reduction within scientific literature when comparing “all hazard” with a “specific hazard modular” planning approach. This chapter examines the “all hazard” applications of Health EDRM policy and program implementation for building community resilience. It also discusses current knowledge frontiers and conceptual gaps within the “all hazard” approach that might hamper the planning and development of health systems resilience globally.