Conducting research on Health Emergency and Disaster Risk Management (Health EDRM) and promoting its uptake to ensure that more people are better protected from the health impacts of emergencies and disasters is a core programme of the WHO Centre for Health Development (WHO Kobe Centre – WKC).
WKC plays a critical role as the secretariat of the WHO Health EDRM Research Network, which facilitates international experience and knowledge sharing to build scientific evidence to inform policies and programmes in regions and countries.
In February 2024, WKC hosted a Forum on Health EDRM with the Japanese Association for Disaster Medicine (JADM) to promote global, regional and local research collaboration.
The WKC Forum was one of the sessions of the JADM 2024 Conference in Kyoto, Japan, and was attended by around 130 participants. The Forum highlighted research promotion initiatives underway within WHO, ASEAN countries, and Japan, and a panel discussion explored promoting research collaboration ahead of the World Association of Disaster and Emergency Medicine (WADEM) Conference in Tokyo in 2025.
“By building a platform for stakeholders to share information and knowledge, we can make the latest knowledge available to the whole country and the world,” said Dr Ryoma Kayano, WHO technical officer responsible for Health EDRM at the WHO Kobe Centre.
He added that since the number of English-language papers was still extremely small in Japan, WKC would collaborate with academic networks to conduct workshops and training on research methods to instil a culture of writing papers.
He urged delegates to strengthen collaboration and continue the momentum of developing research on Health EDRM. Going forward, the vision is to hold workshops for government officials in WHO regions and countries to promote research awareness.
“We also hope to establish a university consortium to promote collaboration and disseminate the WHO guidance on research methods for Health EDRM to improve research capabilities, and increase publications to share knowledge, particularly on what works,” concluded Dr Kayano.
WKC’s outreach initiative continues to expand as more WHO Regions and global, regional and local associations such as WADEM, JADM and the ASEAN Academic Conference on Disaster Health Management use learning materials from the WHO guidance, a cornerstone project of WKC’s Health EDRM research agenda.