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The purpose of this paper is to present a qualitative report on the implementation of activities aimed at reducing disaster risks through safer health facilities in the Western Pacific region.

In response to the Global Campaign on Hospitals Safe from Disasters 2008‐2009, the World Health Organization, with support from the European Commission, provided tools that enabled government, communities and institutions to reduce the risks of their hospitals and health facilities from disasters due to natural hazards. Target countries included Cambodia, Lao PDR, the Philippines and Viet Nam. Different activities were implemented based on country needs, contexts and capacities.

Hospital assessments revealed gaps in infrastructure, essential emergency equipment and functional capacity. Enhancing preparedness and resilience of health facilities is a vital component to ensure risk mitigation and disaster response in communities.

The report calls for further studies on specific gaps in health sector capacity, deficiencies in health infrastructure and economic analysis.

The health sector should implement disaster risk reduction and preparedness strategies through the support of local and national governments.

This is the first report on risk reduction initiatives in the health sector in developing countries in the region. Written at the regional perspective, it engages national and local governments, health policy makers and health facility administrators in the public and private sectors.

This purpose of this research was to develop and establish psychometric properties of scales measuring individual leadership for health promotion.

Scales to measure leadership in health promotion were drafted based on capacity assessment instruments developed by other provinces involved in the Canadian Heart Health Initiative (CHHI), and on the literature. Content validity was established through a series of focus groups and expert opinion appraisals and pilot testing. Psychometric analyses provided empirical evidence of the construct validity and reliability of the leadership scales in the baseline survey (n=144) of the Alberta Heart Health Project.

Principal component analysis verified the construct of the leadership scales of personal work‐related practices and satisfaction with work‐related practices. Each of the theoretically a priori determined scales factored into two scales each for a total of four final scales. Scale alpha coefficients (Cronbach's alpha) ranged between 0.71 and 0.78, thus establishing good scale internal consistencies.

Limitations include the relatively small sample size used in determining psychometric properties. In addition, further qualitative work would enhance understanding of the complexity of leadership in health organizations. These measures can be used by both researchers and practitioners for the assessment leadership for health promotion and to tailor interventions to increase leadership for health promotion in health organizations.

Establishing the psychometric properties and quality of leadership measures is an innovative step toward achieving capacity assessment instruments which facilitate evaluation of key relationships in developing health sector capacity for health promotion.

The purpose of this study is to identify components of contributing conditions to strengthen leadership and management capacity in the health system.

A systematic search was undertaken in databases including PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science and local resources of Scientific Information Database and Magiran in January 2020. Two independent researchers checked the research process, screening of articles and quality assessment. The quality of the studies was assessed by JBI critical appraisal tools for qualitative studies. The components of the dimensions of health system management and leadership capacity were categorized according to the WHO conceptual framework using a content analysis approach.

A total of 17 articles were included in this study. In total, 16 categories of components include human resource information system (n = 5); criteria, plans and procedures for selection and appointment (n = 5); development of education system (n = 11); skills (n = 39); knowledge (n = 8); attitudes (n = 6); behaviors (n = 10); resource and critical management system (n = 7); performance and processes management (n = 3); operational planning for critical systems (n = 4); establish control systems (n = 2); inputs and outputs of organizations (n = 2); accountability and responsibility to customers and stakeholders (n = 4); legal authority and requirements to play the role of managers (n = 9); external and internal environment management (n = 7); establish a system of appreciation and encouragement (n = 6). Each of these categories also contains subcategories.

Identifying prerequisite conditions are necessary for building leadership and management capacity in health systems. Therefore, extracted components provide a simple but coherent framework that can be adapted or modified for use in local situations. The components have a variety of uses, including mapping current activities, needs assessment, planning leadership and management development strategies and monitoring and evaluation.

The significance of investing in healthcare has been recognised during the COVID-19 period more than ever before across the globe. The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed inefficiency in the healthcare systems of many African countries which have resulted in the death of many people including healthcare workers who contracted the virus due to lack of protective equipment. Many African countries have not adequately invested in healthcare systems to prevent and urgently tackle the outbreaks of pandemics. This explains their unpreparedness to immediately address the COVID-19 pandemic that has ravaged many leading to the loss of lives. These challenges, therefore, have created the need to reflect and rethink concerted approaches to tackle this health hiccup. Consequently, this chapter discusses healthcare system challenges that have inhibited the delivery of good healthcare as well as issues of inequality in the provision of healthcare. The chapter explores the solutions to the identified challenges that can be adopted for better functioning of the healthcare system and provision of good healthcare. The chapter discusses how it costs the governments when they don't improve the healthcare systems. These costs are in form of increased strikes over demand for better remunerations, loss of manpower due to brain drain, loss of foreign currency that would come from medical tourism as well as loss of money in form of medical expenses abroad. It also highlights the benefits that accrue from improved healthcare systems. The chapter debates issues of morality about operations of private healthcare facilities and recommends appropriate measures that should be taken for better performance. The chapter recommends to the developing countries with meager resources the best model that can be adapted to better manage future pandemics, taking into account the environmental, cultural and demographic differences. The lessons that readers will pick from this chapter will go a long way in building healthcare systems that protect and shield the population against any future epidemics.

This paper aims to evaluate emergency department (ED) design space planning approaches and draw lessons for developing more resilient and integrated ED guidelines. Two key objectives have been set; these include: exploring potential factors affecting the ED performance, and investigate how ED space planning is addressed internationally through the evaluation of international case studies and design guidelines.

A robust research method has been adopted including comprehensive literature review in addition to 76 case studies from Italy and the USA.

Findings show that the important factors in defining ED space requirements are attendance variability, vulnerable groups and mass casualty events. The study concludes that current design guidelines and approaches need to be updated to meet with the current and future demand by taking into account design performance: effectiveness, efficiency and resilience, to avoid underestimating ED space; and that the US EDs are in a better position, than Italian EDs, to increase capacity when needed.

The contribution of this study is in providing a tangible “understanding” of factors influencing ED design and prepares a firm ground to develop more resilient and integrated design guidelines, able to meet current, exceptional and long-term needs of EDs. The study also shows that research can provide a valuable contribution to improve ED design which needs to feed more in practice to improve design process and guidelines.

This study aims to assess the hospital readiness and resiliency in a disaster-prone Indonesia.

Hospital Safety Index (HSI), containing 151 items, was used to assess ten hospital in West Java and five hospitals in Yogyakarta.

The average level of HSI for the hospitals under investigation is B, indicating that their ability to function during and after emergencies and disasters are potentially at risk, thus, intervention measures are needed in the short term. Hospitals in Yogyakarta scored lowly in terms of their emergency and disaster management, even though they have previously experienced major disasters in 2006 and 2010.

The role of the government is crucial to improve hospital readiness and resiliency in Indonesia. It is recommended that they: identify disaster-prone areas so that their hospital readiness and resiliency can be assessed; assess the readiness and resiliency of hospitals the prioritized areas; implement intervention measures; re-assess the readiness and resiliency of hospitals in the prioritized areas after implementing intervention measures; and develop a framework to ensure that the hospitals can maintain their level of readiness and resiliency over time.

Research on hospital readiness and resiliency in Indonesia is still limited despite the size of the country and its proneness to disasters. This research has investigated the feasibility and value of using HSI to assess hospital readiness and resilience in Indonesia.

Epidemics and pandemics tend to jolt people out of their ordinary living to a special state of crisis and suffering. The COVID-19 pandemic has not proven different, and this chapter and indeed the whole volume is a call to reflect on an ongoing state of volatility, uncertainty, complexities and ambiguity (VUCA). Where it is difficult to project an end to a pandemic as occurs presently, VUCA is even more significant, and the outcomes of these reflections can only augur well for present and future confrontations of a crisis. In this chapter, we have described our premises for understanding work values in a normative sense. Understanding the principles behind the stability and sustainability of these values will serve as a guide for the responsible management of changing workforce dynamics. While respecting the personal choices involved in work values, we outline some social and organisational factors that influence said dynamics.

Ethical principles play a key role in the attendant changes in the workforce ranging from rapid digitisation to remote working, to flexible work hours, and changing workspaces. New problems have arisen relating to the rising costs of working virtually, unequal opportunities in different economies, genders, and fields, and the rapid changes that are still ongoing. Some issues we have tackled include the challenge with employer–employee trust when supervision and workspaces are rapidly shifting, and the responsibility for well-ness and flourishing when the lines between work and the rest of life become blurred. We have recommended some attitudes that will promote integrity in all the stakeholders of a given workforce so that there is effective collaboration and individual growth.

No other region of the world has suffered from such devastating epidemics in the recent past than sub-Saharan Africa. HIV/AIDS poses the worst single health threat on the continent and approximately 28.5 million of people infected with HIV/AIDS are in sub-Saharan Africa, yet, less than 8% have access to treatment. As African countries start or continue to expand their HIV/AIDS treatment programs with the assistance of international donors, they are facing several ethical and health policy challenges, including difficult decisions on how to ration available treatment, the high cost of drugs, the complexity of treatment regimens, the inadequacy of health and delivery systems, the lack of knowledge about treatment, and the threat of drug resistance.

This study aims to analyse the line managers and employees’ use of lean task boards over time in Norwegian municipalities using action learning theory. The research question was the following: what kind of action learning processes do the line managers and employees’ use of the lean task board promote in municipalities’ healthcare units?

This qualitative case study data from a Norwegian municipality involved analyses of 750 internal self-recorded logs from task board sessions from 6 different units and 25 semi-structured interviews of managers and employees.

The task board works for line managers to make employees responsible for forwarding ideas, solutions and implementation of new actions. The use of the task boards contributes to systemising work through establishing new routines and improving orderliness at work. The line managers used the task boards as a project management system to track progress in the purchasing of diverse equipment and initiatives to improve professionalism and their units’ facilities. The study explains the learning challenges for managers using the lean task board, as the method promotes finding experience-based solutions that do not involve critical reflection and use of theory.

The lean task board is well-suited for managers to promote learning processes that counteract chaos in local healthcare organisations. However, the task board has limitations as a method for improving services amongst healthcare units and for solving difficult problems.

The study contributes to understanding how action learning theory can be applied to the analysis of the results of lean task board sessions

Frequent fire incidences in various hospitals across the globe with devastating effects on humans and other resources have multiplied. Stakeholders in the health-care sector are worried because of the yearly fire outbreak increase. However, fire safety management has been proved as a successful platform to mitigate fire in health-care facilities. How far regarding public health-care facilities is yet to receive in-depth studies in Malaysia. This paper aims to investigate the issues associated with fire safety management and proffers possible solutions to improve safety in public health-care facilities from the operators’ perception.

The objectives were achieved through a combination of case studies of five selected Malaysia’s public hospitals and a qualitative approach. Thematic analysis with the assistance of MAXQDA (software program designed for computer-assisted qualitative and mixed methods data) 2018, a type of qualitative data analysis software was used to analyse the collated data which emerged from the knowledgeable participants.

Lax implementation of safety policy, inadequate water pressure, poor maintenance, inadequate communication system, amongst others, emerged as the issues. Findings proffer five main measures to possibly improve fire safety management in public health-care buildings. This includes a feasible institutional framework, improve the emergency response team, improve the occupational health and safety system and others.

This paper is limited to exploring the issues associated with fire safety management and proffer possible solutions to improve safety in public health-care facilities from the operators’ perception. Future research is needed to engage useful information in advancing fire safety management in public hospital buildings and possibly developing a qualitative model using a generic fire response model. Also, to investigate the level of compliance with the requirements of a fire safety management plan and possibly develop a well-detailed fire safety plan in Malaysia’s public health-care buildings.

As part of the paper implications, the paper concludes that improved fire protection systems via modern technologies and training of key staff members in accident response and recovery during fire emergencies should be encouraged. This can be achieved through the enforcement and implementation of a fire safety management plan. Thus, this study is encouraging the implementation and sustainability of a fire safety management plan for health-care buildings across Malaysia.

To the best of this paper’s knowledge, this is possibly the first comprehensive paper on fire safety management in public health-care facilities that engaged operators in Malaysia. Moreover, this paper proffers feasible policy solutions to improve the fire safety management plan in public health-care buildings.