Progress towards the Development of Research Agenda and the Launch of Knowledge Hub: The WHO Thematic Platform for Health Emergency and Disaster Risk Management Research Network (Health EDRM RN).

Ryoma Kayano,Emily Y Y Chan,Shuhei Nomura,Virginia Murray,Qudsia Huda,Jonathan Abrahams

doi:10.3390/ijerph18094959

Abstract

In response to the increasing burden of recent health emergencies and disasters, the World Health Organization (WHO) and its partners established the WHO thematic platform for health emergency and disaster risk management research network (health EDRM RN) in 2016, with the purposes of promoting global research collaboration among various stakeholders and enhancing research activities that generate evidence to manage health risks associated with all types of emergencies and disasters. With the strong support and involvement of all WHO regional offices, the health EDRM RN now works with more than 200 global experts and partners to implement its purposes. The 1st and 2nd Core Group Meetings of the health EDRM RN were held on 17–18 October 2019 and 27 November 2020, respectively, to discuss the development of a global research agenda that the health EDRM RN will focus on facilitating, promoting, synthesizing and implementing, taking into account the emergence of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) (health EDRM RN research agenda). A focus of the meetings was the establishment of an online platform to share information and knowledge, including the databases that the health EDRM RN accumulates (WHO health EDRM knowledge hub). This paper presents a summary of the discussion results of the meetings.

Highlights

This paper summarises the discussion results of the 1st and 2nd health emergency and disaster risk management (EDRM) RN core group meetings held on 17–18
Note that a part of this table was adapted from a report of the 1st core group meeting issued by the World Health Organization (WHO) Kobe Centre [9] and Kayano et al [8]
Health EDRM research is expected to deal with a wide range of risks and events, including those associated with natural hazards, human-induced hazards and other complex emergencies

Summary

Introduction

The number and severity of health emergencies and disasters are increasing as a result of a variety of factors, including unplanned urbanization, climate change and an increasing number of vulnerable elderly people [1,2]. There is an urgent need for evidencebased health emergency and disaster risk management policies and programs through effective prevention, preparedness, response and recovery measures. Nations World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction (WCDRR) held in Japan in 2015, the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015–2030—including four priority actions and seven targets that cover prevention, preparation, response and recovery for.

Methods

Results

Conclusion