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ABSTRACT
Increasingly severe extreme weather events (EWEs) threaten population health in Asia-Pacific. Resilient health systems can minimize health risks by improving EWE preparedness, response, and recovery. However, how health systems demonstrate resilience is less understood in the emerging resilience literature. The objective of this scoping review was to describe how peer-reviewed and grey literature has operationalized health system resilience to EWEs in Asia-Pacific. Included sources were available in English, published from 2000 to 2019, and focused on health system activity in Asia-Pacific for EWE risk management. The World Health Organization's climate-resilient health system framework and building block model guided analysis of 49 sources. Health system activity was categorized by system building blocks. Assets and/or gaps to resilience were identified based on whether building blocks facilitated or impeded EWE risk management. Sources mostly focused on the Philippines (29%), India (16%) and Thailand (14%), with lower income economies and Pacific Island countries underrepresented. Floods (47%), typhoons (27%), and cyclones (16%) were frequently discussed while no sources mentioned droughts. Financing was the least mentioned building block (27%) and often described as a gap to resilience (24%). Overall, this review highlights opportunities for future research to develop EWE resilient health systems in Asia-Pacific and beyond.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Natural disaster data sourced from publications by the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED), with the exception of Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (Citation2015), are inclusive of geophysical disasters (e.g. earthquakes) documented in the EM-DAT database (Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters, Citation2015, Citation2018, Citation2019a, Citation2019b, Citation2020; Guha-Sapir et al., Citation2017). However, geophysical events generally accounted for a smaller proportion of annual natural disasters relative to hydro-, meteoro-, and climatological events (Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters, Citation2015, Citation2018, Citation2019a, Citation2019b, Citation2020; Guha-Sapir et al., Citation2017).
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Vinussa Rameshshanker
Vinussa Rameshshanker recently completed her Bachelor of Public Health in the School of Public Health and Health Systems, University of Waterloo (Canada). She is currently a MA student in International Affairs in the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs at Carleton University (Canada).
Sara Wyngaarden
Sara Wyngaarden recently completed her MSc in Public Health and Health Systems at the University of Waterloo (Canada). She currently works as a Research Associate in the School of Public Health and Health Systems at the University of Waterloo.
Lincoln L. Lau
Lincoln L. Lau is the Director of Research for International Care Ministries (Manila, Philippines). He also holds appointments in the School of Public Health and Health Systems, University of Waterloo (Canada) and the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto (Canada).
Warren Dodd
Warren Dodd is an Assistant Professor in the School of Public Health and Health Systems, University of Waterloo (Canada).