This document discusses what is needed to make multisectoral partnerships work for disaster preparedness. It identifies key stakeholders that should be involved, including human health, animal health, environmental sectors, finance, private sector, and non-state actors. It emphasizes that successful partnerships require collaborative and distributed leadership across sectors, developing sector-specific plans with clear roles and joint activities, and cultivating a culture of mutual learning among diverse stakeholders.

1. WHAT DOES IT TAKE TO MAKE A
MULTISECTORAL PARTNERSHIP WORK FOR
DISASTER PREPAREDNESS?
Rajib Dasgupta
Jawaharlal Nehru University
Session 2: Pandemics: Lessons learned and future challenges
Special Technical Session, WCDM-2021 1

2. • Emergency preparedness: knowledge and
capacities and organizational systems developed
by governments, response and recovery
organizations, communities and individuals to
effectively anticipate, respond to, and recover
from the impact of likely, imminent, emerging or
current emergencies
• Multisectoral preparedness: deliberate
collaboration between stakeholders from multiple
and diverse sectors and disciplines working
towards the shared goal of enhanced health
emergency preparedness by leveraging
knowledge, expertise, strengths, reach and
resources.
State Party self-assessment Annual Reporting
(SPAR): four indicators specifically related to
multisectoral coordination;
lowest scores in the African, South-East Asia
and Western Pacific regions
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3. THE STAKEHOLDERS . . .
• Human health, animal health and environmental sectors: considered together within a “One
Health” approach; identified as key sectors for multisectoral coordination of health emergency
preparedness and health security
• Finance sector
• Foreign policy and international relations
• Ministries of interior and defense
• National parliaments: Health in All Policies approach; sustain political will
• Private sector
• Non-state actors
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4. WHAT IS INTERSECTORAL ACTION?
• Actions affecting health outcomes
undertaken by sectors outside the health
sector, possibly, but not necessarily, in
collaboration with the health sector.
• Processes for effective intersectoral
coordination
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5. DEVELOPING SECTOR SPECIFIC PLANS
• Arrangement
• Informal – might be good to start with
• Formal – Written letter/ MoU/Agreement
• Establish Working mechanisms
• Joint teams / Review meetings
• Focal Points & Leads
• Identify “Zones of Convergence”
• Identify Joint Priority Activities
• Joint Activities – training
• Share resources – sites
• Joint Review of the progress and development revised plan
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6. WHAT IS MULTISECTORAL ACTION FOR HEALTH?
• Health sector as a minimal actor in contexts where other individual sectors undertake their
core business and have spillover effects for health
• Health sector as a supporting actor, for cross sectoral policies to address structural forces
and social norms that affect all of society, including those that drive disparities
• 3. Health sector as a bilateral or trilateral partner, in contexts where collaboration is
required between two or more sectors to produce joint or ‘co-benefits’ and maximize
health benefits
• 4. Health sector as a lead actor, in contexts where collaboration with other sectors is
essential for the health sector to deliver its core mandate in delivering health services
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7. • Successful One Health collaborations: synergistic impact of combining detailed and
logistically challenging field sciences (ecology, field biology) with analytical
approaches (epidemiological modeling, pathogen phylogenetic analysis) and
laboratory science (serology, pathogen diagnostics, immunology).
• The soul of One Health is a multi-disciplinary approach and multi-sectoral
collaboration in the realm of policy and governance; entails working across
ministries and navigating tacit institutional hierarchies and allocating leadership
roles on a health issue.
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8. COLLABORATIVE AND DISTRIBUTED LEADERSHIP IS KEY
• ‘Strong man’ leadership is rarely fit for the purpose (occasional results)
• Build leadership capacity across sectors and levels of government
• Cultivate champions in different sectors who can agree on common objectives
• Health-sector leadership development should prioritize competencies such as
negotiation, flexibility and learning, communication, and relationship building
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9. THE RUES OF ENGAGEMENT
• Non-governmental stakeholders, including civil society (organized groups and
citizens), academia, the private sector, and external funders, with clarity regarding
their respective roles
• More likely to succeed if they are institutionalized in existing structures and not
championed by a single group or individual
• Need sustained efforts for ongoing challenges: more likely if they are not driven by
novel structures outside of mainstream systems
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10. CULTIVATE A CULTURE OF MUTUAL LEARNING AMONG THE
DIVERGENT STAKEHOLDERS
• Innate uncertainties and knowledge gaps with regard to multisectoral action
• Heightened need to course correct as implementation proceeds
• Developing shared mental models
• Building indicators and methods for monitoring and evaluation
Key to success: consultative and collaborative leadership that promotes innovation,
adaptation and flexibility in terms of political, financial and administrative
accountability.
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