The development of the H3 Package: a Package of High-Priority Health Services for Humanitarian Response

Humanitarian crises substantially impact the health of affected populations, and the scale of humanitarian need is at a historic high level. To more effectively support the growing number of people affected by humanitarian crises, the WHO, the Global Health Cluster and humanitarian partners undertook an initiative to define a core set of services to be delivered during a humanitarian response. This paper describes that process.

The methodology used in the development of a Package of High-Priority Health Services for Humanitarian Response (the H3 Package) was derived from an evidence-informed deliberative process and included the following steps: identifying operational assumptions, defining the burden of disease context, identifying services in relevant existing service packages, identifying priority-setting criteria, defining service delivery platforms, selecting services based on WHO's Universal Health Coverage Compendium of Health Interventions services and conducting an expert validation process.

The final H3 Package is organised across six domains: foundations of care, sexual and reproductive health, violence and injury, rehabilitation and palliative care, communicable diseases, and non-communicable diseases and mental health. The full package is available online via the WHO Service Planning, Delivery and Implementation Platform. The H3 Package is intended as a reference to be contextualised, and steps for contextualisation are proposed.

The H3 Package sets a global standard for a core set of health services that humanitarian actors can reasonably be expected to deliver in humanitarian settings. This paper provides an overview of the H3 package, describes the methods used in its development and suggests steps for package contextualisation and implementation.