Strengthening resilience: a priority shared by Health 2020 and the Sustainable Development Goals (2017)

Resilience is at the core of the WHO European policy framework for health and wellbeing – Health 2020 – and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Despite resilience having become a buzz-word of late, its concept is often misunderstood. This publication illustrates the three levels of resilience (individual, community and system) and their implications for health. It also describes four capacities of resilience – absorptive, adaptive, anticipatory and transformative – which can be applied at all three levels. The publication expands on the WHO publication, Building resilience: a key pillar of Health 2020 and the Sustainable Development Goals. Examples from the WHO Small countries initiative.