Resilient Health and the Healthcare System. A Few Introductory Remarks in Times of the COVID-19 Pandemic

People across the globe are facing increasingly complex public health emergencies that are responsible for the loss of life, economic and social problems with unprecedented damage and costs. For some sociologists, our society is even a risk society and our time is highly violative. Emergencies of different origin: stemming from natural environmental disasters, such as floods, hurricanes, intense drought, technical accidents, social unrest and last but not least-outbreaks of infectious diseases. This decade started with one of the most significant pandemics in the history of man-kind-COVID-19. Hence, the problems of resilient health and healthcare systems have become urgent. Especially since SARS-CoV-2 may cause long-term health threats and recurrent crises. It is very important to have a common language. So far, definitions and concepts of health and healthcare resilience differ substantially and are seldom clearly defined. The aim of this paper is to describe how health and healthcare system resilience is defined to either uncover, recall, or in combination, its concept and prepare an introductory conceptual review as a preliminary step for further studies.

Automated summary

People around the world are facing increasingly complex public health emergencies, particularly the COVID-19 pandemic, which has brought urgent attention to the resilience of health and healthcare systems. However, there is currently a lack of consensus and clear definition regarding the concept of health and healthcare system resilience, highlighting the need for further research.