• Koren V Kanadanian and Constance K Haan.
• Emergency Response Coordinator, United States Department of Health and Human Services, Boston, Massachusetts; Assistant Secretary of Emergency Preparedness and Response, Office of Emergency Management, Franklin, Massachusetts.
• Am J Disaster Med. 2014 Jan 1; 9 (4): 247-58.

ObjectiveResearch and field experience have identified a global gap in postdisaster rebuilding of healthcare systems due to the current primary focus on returning devastated community infrastructures to predisaster conditions. Disasters, natural or man-made, present an opportunity for communities to rebuild, restructure, and redefine their predisaster states, creating more resilient and sustainable healthcare systems.DesignA model for sustainable postdisaster healthcare rebuilding was developed by bridging identified gaps in the literature on the processes of developing healthcare systems postdisaster and utilizing evidence from the literature on postdisaster community reconstruction.ResultsThe proposed model-the Sustainable Healthcare Redevelopment Model-is designed to guide communities through the process of recovery, and identifies four stages for rebuilding healthcare systems: (1) response, (2) recovery, (3) redevelopment, and (4) sustainable development. Implementing sustainable healthcare redevelopment involves a bottom-up approach, where community stakeholders have the ability to influence policy decisions. Relationships within internal government agencies and with public-private partnerships are necessary for successful recovery.ConclusionThe Sustainable Healthcare Redevelopment Model can serve as a guideline for delivery of healthcare services following disaster or conflict and use of crisis as a window of opportunity to improve the healthcare delivery system and incorporate resilience into the healthcare infrastructure.

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