∙ Recognize that across all nations the local community is the immediate “caretaker” and therefore the most crucial focus of disaster risk reduction (DRR)

∙ Recognize that all communities are unique, discrete and have the capacity to participate in their own DRR process

∙ Identify, implement and develop unique community level DRR plans

∙ Develop regional level disaster risk reduction banks of resources to support community DRR plans and mitigation strategies

∙ Promote social cohesion as a component of community resilience and DRR

∙ Enhance public health infrastructure and social protection programs by mainstreaming DRR surveillance

∙ Encourage interdisciplinary cooperation among the community stakeholders, sectors, and actors

∙ Support capacity of the community to reduce indirect consequences of disaster

∙ Identify the capacity and limits of community health resilience based on multiple community metrics

∙ Provide greater government incentives and opportunities in communities with low capacity for health resilience

∙ Ensure protection and continuity of health services as a critical community asset before, during, and after disasters (throughout the entire disaster cycle)

∙ Recognize health goals and indicators as the monitoring and reporting tool for DRR and disaster risk management (DRM)

∙ Strengthen public health infrastructure (transportation, water, electricity, gas, etc) and its function (supply chain) to support essential health services

∙ Reduce vulnerability inhibiting public health, including poverty, malnutrition, crowding, food security, migration, urbanization, informal settlements, etc

∙ Strengthen DRR health components of other UN strategic initiatives, such as Effective Climate Change, MDG, SDG, and Poverty in UN Human Security Concept

∙ Incorporate tenets of DRR in principles and practices of sustainable development planning

∙ Strengthen mainstreaming of health into other disciplines of government and private sector

∙ Strengthen actionable health risk assessment, surveillance, reporting, and documentation in line with UNISDR elements paper

∙ Promote national capacity building to manage, direct, and monitor healthcare system delivery

∙ Support World Health Organization’s (WHO) initiative to establish the professionalization and registry processes of national and foreign medical teams

∙ Promote the establishment of a national medical assistance team for capacity building that is, where appropriate, accountable to the affected community

∙ Ensure that direct and indirect (preventable) health consequences can be mitigated by appropriate national and international medical assistance

∙ Foreign medical teams (FMTs) must register and participate in the IASC health cluster system when it is implemented (this can be enhanced when mandated by the receiving sovereign country)

∙ Support WHO’s establishment of guidance to sovereign nations to develop a process for integration of international medical assistance

∙ FMTs must adopt minimum standards for performance as published by WHO (Sept. 2013)

∙ Health care professionals should work on local, national, and regional risk anticipation assessment and risk reduction banks

∙ National and international medical teams must record data documents and report them to the local health authorities and/or health cluster

∙ International government sponsored, registry to health cluster, classification, authority of the sovereign country remains (FMT can be a hazard)

∙ Acknowledge that the common threat of all the above mentioned crises is that they produce public health emergencies that must be seen as a strategic and human security issue

∙ Current emerging crises are defined through climate impact and extreme events, biodiversity crises, unsustainable rapid urbanization, emergencies of scarcity (water, food, and energy)

∙ Restructure and redesign global and country level DRR/DRM programs to emphasize prevention and preparedness projects, research, political and policy advocacy, and pragmatic trans-disciplinary and multidisciplinary global solutions; health alone does not have the solutions

∙ Research population shifts and analyze their impacts on local, national, and regional communities

∙ Incorporate DRR/DRM for measurable data documentation and outcome research indices in at least six disaster-prone areas in all continents to ensure that community resilience programs are designed to mitigate the potential for extreme health consequences

∙ Incorporate disaster ecologists, UN Green Helmet initiatives and other regionally and nationally placed likeminded programs into all disaster mitigation and recovery programs

∙ Provide strict risk-based policy and protection laws for areas worldwide impacted by rapid urbanization, biodiversity losses, extreme climate changes, and vital resource grabbing by import dependent countries

∙ Lobby for implementation of global treaties that protect these current crises from expanding further through innovative prevention and preparedness initiatives and policies, in a similar fashion to the IHR

∙ Investigate population shifts and their impacts on the community