Resilience for Health-An Emergent Property of the "Health Systems as a Whole"

Resilience has become a popular term, and its meaning varies widely depending on the context of its use. Its Latin origin, resilire, means "bouncing back"-should bouncing back be understood literally or rather metaphorically in the context of health, illness, dis-ease, and disease? This essay examines ecological, physiological, personal, and health system perspectives inherent in the concept of resilience. It emerges that regardless of the level of aggregation, resilience is a systems property-it is as much a property of each of the subsystems of network physiology, the person, and the health care delivery system as it is a property of the health system as a whole. Given the interdependencies between people, their internal and external environments, and the health service system, strengthening resilience, ie, the ability to positively adapt to challenges and changing circumstances, will require a broad-based public discourse: "How can we strengthen resilience and health for the benefit of people and society at large".

PMID: 30304756