Many countries face prolonged health workforce crises, marked by shortages, maldistribution, skills mix imbalances and attrition. When workforces are overstretched, they become more vulnerable to external shocks and chronic strains, including infectious disease outbreaks, climate-related effects and political instability. This is particularly concerning as an emerging global “polycrisis” means such external pressures increasingly interact and amplify one another in unpredictable ways. Strengthening health workforce resilience must therefore become a priority for policy and planning.

This article’s objective is to introduce a resilience lens for health workforce policy and planning. It
introduces the Health Workforce Resilience framework, which illustrates how the multilevel nature of health workforce resilience connects individual health workers, teams and organisations, and the
national health workforce level.