The World Health Organization Global Health Emergency Workforce: What Role Will the United States Play?

Abstract

During the May 2016 World Health Assembly of 194 member states, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced the process of developing and launching emergency medical teams as a critical component of the global health workforce concept. Over 64 countries have either launched or are in the development stages of vetting accredited teams, both international and national, to provide surge support to national health systems through WHO Regional Organizations and the delivery of emergency clinical care to sudden-onset disasters and outbreak-affected populations. To date, the United States has not yet committed to adopting the emergency medical team concept in funding and registering an international field hospital level team. This article discusses future options available for health-related nongovernmental organizations and the required educational and training requirements for health care provider accreditation. (Disaster Med Public Health Preparedness. 2016;10:531-535)

Taking Systems Thinking to the Global Level: Using the WHO Building Blocks to Describe and Appraise the Global Health System in Relation to COVID‐19

“…Furthermore, to date only a limited number of countries have signed up to offer EMT. As of 2016, there were estimated to be just over 64 EMT from 25 countries (Burkle, 2016 ) with the US, for example, failing to provide an EMT. In addition, because of their focus on emergency/disaster management, the teams are weighted towards surgical/clinical care with less knowledge of other health areas such as NCDs, or public health, which may be more relevant to pandemic control (El‐Khani et al, 2019 ).…”

Simulation and Modeling Applications in Global Health Security

“…Not infrequently, health providers have had to learn quickly that their specialty training alone was not enough that they lack the operational skills sets and collaborative leadership capacity required for the demands of resource, poor decision-making during the complexities of public health emergencies such as epidemics. Under the EMT concept all countries share the responsibility to ensure that cross disciplinary, competency-based knowledge in field-related tasks to practice globally with high standards of care [12] An essential component to improve WHO EMT quality and accountability of national and international EMTs is appropriate education and training. Multiple disaster education and training programs are available, however, most are centered on individual professional development rather than on the EMTs operational performance.…”

Review of international efforts to strengthen the global outbreak response system since the 2014–16 West Africa Ebola Epidemic

“…Australia, China, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Germany, Israel, Japan, New Zealand, Russia and the UK are among the countries that have registered EMTs (Pan American Health Organization, 2017). Over 200 teams are expected to join, representing a global workforce of an estimated 100 000 trained experts across a variety of health fields (Burkle, 2016). These include clinicians, public health experts, laboratory specialists, epidemiologists, operations coordinators and incident managers.…”