Using a Partnership-Based Approach to Strengthen Acute Care Systems in the Pacific and Timor-Leste

Emergency and critical care services are essential to universal health coverage. World Health Assembly (WHA) Resolution 76.2, adopted in 2023, outlined the importance of integrated emergency, critical and operative care systems in strengthening primary healthcare capabilities. Recent research has determined that system strengthening and partnership-based approaches to healthcare capacity development have the potential to achieve greater equity and sustainability. The Regional Emergency and Critical Care Systems Strengthening Initiative (RECSI) is an Australian Government funded programme under the Partnerships for a Healthy Region (PHR) initiative. It aims to enhance acute care capacity and healthcare system resilience across the Pacific and Timor Leste. RECSI is led by a consortium of acute care organisations and provides a vehicle for progressing WHA 76.2. The programme focuses on four thematic areas: workforce capacity and training, systems and processes, data and research, and leadership and governance. As part of RECSI's inception, a structured programme logic was developed, which describes programme activities and outputs, and how they contribute to defined intermediate and end-of-programme outcomes. RECSI's monitoring, evaluation and learning (MEL) plan, which supplements the programme logic, incorporates sustainability indicators that are focused on monitoring the impact of mechanisms designed to enable ongoing benefits from programme outcomes. Utilising a partner-led and context-specific programme design, RECSI represents a rigorous approach to acute care system strengthening. This strategy aims to build genuine partnerships to leverage skills, knowledge and opportunity across the Pacific and Timor-Leste.