Health & Health Facilities Networks & Communities

Health and disaster risk reduction network

Launched as a part of the World Disaster Reduction Campaign 2008-2009: Hospitals Safe from Disasters, the HDRRN List will allow stakeholders to engage with the Campaign, share information, and create opportunities for collaboration. For the duration of the Campaign, all messages on the HDRRN List will be tagged 'Safe Hospitals', and list members are encouraged to post messages that relate to the Campaign goals of:
- Ensuring that health facilities are structurally resilient to natural hazards.
- Making sure health facilities can remain functioning when natural hazards strike, and in their aftermath.
- Improving the disaster risk reduction capacity of health workers.
Beyond the two-year Campaign, the HDRRN List will welcome broader discussions of health issues and disaster risk reduction.

LinkedIn groups on disaster risk reduction and health

LinkedIn is a professional network which provide an opportunity to create discussion groups on particular topics.

The following groups are available on LinkedIn:

Disaster Risk Reduction for Health
A discussion group for learning and sharing practical and conceptual aspects of disaster risk reduction as applied to health.

Visit the group's page online.

Towards a Safer World (TASW)

TASW is a multi-stakeholder network of practitioners on whole of society preparedness for pandemics and comparable threats, led by the UN System.

The TASW Network is a diverse group of energetic and expert practitioners from a variety of sectors, organisations and countries demonstrating how they have initiated whole-of-society preparedness for pandemic and related threats. They commit to maintaining and refining the best practices they have developed, and agree to communicate it widely, mainstream it within institutions, sustain it, reach out and engage others who might benefit from it, and to continue to learn from each other. They opt to maintain contact through a network that includes a broad range of partners from government, business, civil society, research groups and the military – from five continents.

It builds on the significant investments and broad participation in pandemic preparedness since 2005, which have generated many practical lessons and innovations - relevant not only for improving responses to health crises, but also for strengthening societal resilience in the face of other major threats.

TASW Network promotes key good practices include (i) coordination of multi-actor networks, including professionals from business, Government and civil society, (ii) planning for the maintenance of critical services, (iii) implementation of communication strategies, (iv) simulations to test and validate contingency plans, (v) mobilization of funds for preparedness and (vi) development of tools for measuring preparedness.

This periodic newsletter provides TASW network members with an opportunity to share recent activities, case studies and developments that may be of wider interest.