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Impact 1 – WHO-GOARN Outbreak Response Leadership Training The Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network (GOARN) is a collaboration of over 250 institutions and networks coordinated by the World Health Organisation (WHO). The network pools human and technical resources in order to respond rapidly to international public health outbreaks. During such outbreaks it is vital that GOARN responders provide much-needed public health expertise and act as influential, trusted leaders in order to increase the number of lives saved and reduce suffering in affected communities. In 2019, as part of GOARN's drive for continuous improvement, it enlisted the GCSP’s help to develop a programme that will prepare current and future emergency responders and equip them with advanced leadership and crisis management capabilities.
The approach we took was to work with the GOARN leadership, training team and experienced responders to identify the mindsets, skills and practices that are commonly observed in highly effective responders and response teams, as well as more broadly across the crisis management sector.
▪ They
display a “networked” mindset, identify key actors, and quickly build up relationships of trust by continuously sharing information and expertise in accessible ways.
▪ They
recognise that leadership is both a function and a range of shared practices expected of everyone in the team.
▪ They
can rapidly make sense of complex situations, identify risks and act accordingly, often with limited information and by drawing on the abilities of other team members.
▪ They
are very aware of, and contribute to, a response team’s collective resilience, well-being, and capacity to endure and navigate adversity for sustained periods of time.
These insights led to a programme co-designed with GOARN that has three core phases, each with individual and collective elements: 1. Engage – involving a combination of self-paced and virtual activities over six weeks 2. Immerse – involving a five-day highly experiential face-to-face workshop 3. Apply – involving an ongoing mobilisation of knowledge, practice and peer-group learning. The rollout of the programme will commence in 2020, with two editions planned for the first year, together with a train-the-trainer approach to ensure long-term sustainability.
Transformative Journeys to Create a Safer World
The need was for network members to be able to quickly and effectively transition from normative roles as senior health experts in their respective organisations around the world and at short notice enter an emergency response situation as part of the WHO response team. Such situations are characterised by high personal and operational exposure to risk and increased levels of uncertainty. The situation on the ground changes almost daily, many diverse stakeholders are involved, and the difficulties that WHO teams face are often further exacerbated by stressful and resource-poor working conditions.
Some examples of the characteristics of effective responders we identified:
| 2019 Annual Report
