Defining collaborative surveillance: a core concept for strengthening the global architecture for health emergency preparedness, response, and resilience (HEPR)

Book excerpt: The complex challenges highlighted by the COVID-19 pandemic and other major health emergencies emphasize the need to rethink our approach to surveillance, while building upon the momentum of substantive investments in public health capacity in recent years. At the 75th World Health Assembly in May 2022, WHO set out a harmonizing framework to strengthen the global architecture for health emergency preparedness, response, and resilience (HEPR). Under the proposed global architecture, the ability to effectively prevent, prepare for, detect, respond to, and recover from health emergencies at subnational, national, regional and global levels depend on the operational readiness and capacities in five interconnected systems: collaborative surveillance, community protection, safe and scalable clinical care, access to countermeasures, and emergency coordination. This document defines the collaborative surveillance concept—proposing a conceptual model, dimensions across which collaboration should occur to enable multi-source and multisectoral surveillance, key objectives and concrete capabilities for how countries, with the support of WHO and partners, can further advance surveillance capabilities, and address fragmented and insufficient capacity. The collaborative surveillance concept was developed to support all stakeholders working on surveillance.