The American University of Beirut is partnering along with academic institutes from UK, Nepal, Myanmar and Sierra Leon, in a new project aiming to produce a body of high-quality, relevant, practical, scalable research which can be used to improve the health and lives of many millions of people in fragile and shock- prone settings. This research series contributes to answering key questions related to resilience of healthcare systems and ways to improve healthcare delivery in fragile settings, including:
- How can coordination between overlapping national health systems and providers be improved?
- How can service delivery change to increase uptake by particularly vulnerable groups?
- What are the politics of intervention implementation in fragile settings and how do actors and arising powers influence services?
- How can we use evidence to strengthen health systems and routine and emergency service planning in decentralized contexts?
- What metrics and processes are appropriate for appraising health system resilience?
- What are the most effective tools to improve monitoring and accountability?
- How can we build more inclusive and gender transformative models of care?
Funded by a £7.68 million grant from the UK government's Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO), the “ReBUILD for Resilience" project will run until 2026. This six-year research program is led by Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, Queen Margret University in UK, and in collaboration with HERD International in Nepal, Burnet Institute in Myanmar, COMAHS in Sierra Leon, and the American University of Beirut. The project builds on the work started during the highly successful ReBUILD program, but will focus on a wider range of stressors and shocks in different contexts – fragile and shock-prone (FASP) settings.
During ReBUILD for Resilience, AUB, through the Knowledge to Policy (K2P) Center and the Refugees Health Program (RHP), will conduct syntheses through the creation of briefs and other summaries, deliberative dialogues and stakeholder coordination meetings, learning from strategies already underway in focus countries. Through this model, AUB will offer a rapid response function for governments facing time-bound development challenges.
A key strand of the program will be the responsive fund; a flexible way for all partners and associate partners to access funds to support responsive activities. This might cover additional analysis of existing data sets, evidence synthesis, pump prime projects, which can lead to multiplier funding, and rapid requests from policy players at international and national levels.
CLICK HERE to learn more about this project.
For more information on the program, please contact Dr. Fouad Fouad, Associate Professor of Public Health Practice, Department of Epidemiology & Population Health, FHS at mm157@aub.edu.lb