http://healthsystemsresearch.org/hsr2016/

Theme: Resilient and responsive health systems for a changing world
Resilience: absorbing shocks and sustaining gains

Health systems around the world inevitably confront multiple converging
global, national and local challenges: from economic crises to
environmental disaster; from infectious disease outbreaks and violence
to hidden epidemics of mental illness and malnutrition; from rapid
urbanization to post-conflict fragility. Today’s top stories – Ebola and 
failing health systems in West Africa, maternal health, chronic disease, 
environmental disasters causing thousands of deaths, health care and 
public health systems facing economic crisis – highlight the convergence 
of ‘old’ and ‘new’ challenges, and the crucial role of research in 
understanding and confronting these converging priorities. Health 
systems must be resilient – able to absorb the shocks and sustain the 
gains already made – or risk having decades of investment wiped out.

Responsiveness: anticipating change, respecting rights and engaging politics

Health systems must also be responsive. They must anticipate future
needs, as well as harness emerging opportunities to promote universal
health coverage and universal access to effective interventions. Our
changing world also brings new opportunities – from information
technology and social media to bio-technology – that must be harnessed
for building resilience and responsiveness. Health systems must respond
to demographic and epidemiological shifts across the world: shifts that
are themselves related to social, ecological, economic and geopolitical
changes.

Tackling the diverse sets of current and future challenges demands
robust and inclusive decision-making processes.

Better governance, voice and accountability are essential for
people-centred systems. Political action is needed to ensure adequate
domestic financing reinforced with international support, where
necessary, and efficient resource use.

Many health system drivers lie outside traditional ‘health’ boundaries.
Working on them requires diverse groups to be brought together,
including policy-makers, activists, community representatives,
administrators, researchers and educators. Social mobilization and
inter-sectoral action are essential for re-orienting health systems to
be more people-centred. Research can evaluate and suggest new ways in
which health systems and inter-sectoral collaborations can better
respond to people’s emerging health needs, be directly accountable to
communities, and ensure the rights and dignity of all people who use and
provide health care services. Participatory action research in
particular can directly enable people to voice their concerns and ideas
for better health systems.

Health systems are incubators of innovation.

At HSR2016 in Vancouver, we will collectively engage and interrogate
opportunities and modalities of transformation and resilience in health
systems – in all their diverse realities – and as yet unforeseen
challenges and opportunities that health systems may encounter. We seek
to understand these diverse settings, and develop a more integrated
understanding of the multiple ‘real worlds’ health systems are embedded
within. HSR2016 will explore ways of preserving public value and public
goods in the face of systemic changes that populations, governments and
health systems as a whole have to confront, both today and in the future.

Whether you work on the role of the state or private sector, community
participation, climate change, interdisciplinary modelling, intellectual
property or maternal and child health, we invite you to share how your
work can inform and learn from others, build the field, and transform
health systems for the future, now.

Health Systems Global organizes a symposium every two years to bring
together its members with the full range of players involved in health
systems and policy research. There is currently no other international
gathering that serves the needs of this community.

Contact us: [log in to unmask]

http://healthsystemsresearch.org/hsr2016/

Access CANCHID archives at: https://listserv.yorku.ca/archives/canchid.html . CANCHID is a constituency service to the Global Health Community and is managed by Prof. Emeritus Sam Lanfranco <[log in to unmask]>