Assess capacity

1. Assess overall preparedness capacity

• The State Parties Annual Reporting (SPAR) is a mandatory, annual, self-reporting tool to monitor progress towards full implementation of IHR.
• The Joint External Evaluation (JEE) is a voluntary and comprehensive process conducted every 3-5 years to evaluate country capacity across 19 technical areas.

2. Characterize risks and vulnerability

• The Strategic Tool for Assessing Risks (STAR) assesses the likelihood and potential impact of public health risks to inform planning and prioritization of health emergency preparedness and disaster risk management activities.
• Dynamic Preparedness Metric (DPM) provides preparedness risks for 5 syndromes for all State Parties. Using open-source data across 3 dimensions (hazard, vulnerability and capacity) for up-to-date contextual assessments, the DPM supports prioritization of risks and target interventions.

3. Evaluate real-world performance

• After-Action Reviews (AARs) are qualitative evaluations of a response to a real event. For protracted events such as COVID-19, countries may use an Intra-Action Review (IAR) to inform response and preparedness planning going forward.
• Simulation Exercises (SimExs) are qualitative evaluations of simulated events to test the performance of the preparedness system in anticipation of a real event.

4. Identify coordination barriers between animal and human health sectors

• The One Health and IHR-PVS bridging workshops identify corrective measures to improve the collaboration between the two sectors in the prevention, detection and response to zoonotic disease outbreaks and other health issues.

Each type of assessment provides a unique insight into the country's risk, vulnerability and capacity profile for infectious diseases threats.

The WHO Benchmarks online portal uses the SPAR and JEE as baseline data to propose benchmark actions for high quality national plans for IHR and health security, including NAPHS.

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