Research & Projects
CHILD HEALTH SECURITY
Child Health Security: Prevention, Continuity of Care and Rehabilitation in War-Affected Communities
Concept Status
Concept — Seeking Partners
Funding Status
seeking_partners
Why this matters
War can interrupt preventive care, vaccination, chronic-disease management, rehabilitation, specialist access and mental-health support, while displacement complicates continuity between providers and regions or countries. These breaks can accumulate into avoidable health and developmental risks for children.
Why this matters now
War-related displacement, attacks on infrastructure and repeated disruption can interrupt paediatric care, vaccination, chronic-condition management, rehabilitation, mental-health referrals and access to medicines. Child health security therefore depends not only on emergency response but on resilient continuity pathways that families can actually navigate.
Primary objective
Design, pilot and evaluate resilient child-health continuity pathways for war-affected communities, linking prevention and immunisation, primary paediatric care, chronic conditions, rehabilitation, mental-health referral, epidemiological preparedness and family navigation.
Specific objectives
Map where displacement, infrastructure disruption and service fragmentation interrupt paediatric prevention, treatment and rehabilitation pathways.
Co-design continuity and referral protocols with qualified paediatric, public-health, rehabilitation and mental-health partners.
Pilot family-navigation and continuity mechanisms in selected war-affected communities and measure missed care, referral completion and equity.
Develop community preparedness, prevention and policy tools that can be adopted by health-system and municipal partners.
Methodology
Health-service pathway mapping using facility, referral and family-navigation evidence with qualified health-system partners.
Public-health and epidemiological review of prevention, immunisation and continuity risks in war-affected settings.
Mixed-method research with caregivers, clinicians and service managers under health-data and child-safeguarding protocols.
Co-design and pilot testing of referral, continuity and preparedness protocols rather than creation of a parallel clinical service.
Implementation evaluation using missed-care, referral-completion, immunisation, rehabilitation-access and equity indicators.
Core Research Question
What community and cross-regional mechanisms can protect continuity of paediatric prevention, treatment and rehabilitation during displacement, return and recovery?
Proposed Work Packages
Continuity-of-care mapping
Prevention and immunisation access
Chronic-condition pathways
Rehabilitation and post-trauma support
Child mental-health referral
Epidemiological preparedness
Family navigation
Digital continuity record concept subject to privacy and legal review
Geography
Ukraine, with community and cross-regional pilots subject to partner capacity and safety
Target Groups
Children in war-affected communities
Displaced and returning children
Children with chronic conditions or rehabilitation needs
Families and paediatric service providers
Expected Outputs
Continuity-of-care protocol
Prevention and immunisation gap analysis
Referral model
Rehabilitation pathway
Community preparedness toolkit
Policy recommendations
Intended Outcomes
Improved continuity of paediatric care
Better prevention and rehabilitation access
More reliable family navigation across services
Proposed Indicators
Missed-care reduction
Vaccination completion
Continuity for chronic conditions
Rehabilitation access
Referral completion
Family navigation outcomes
Partners Sought
Medical universities and paediatric/public-health institutions
Rehabilitation centres and municipalities
Child mental-health and epidemiology specialists
Health foundations and relevant international health actors
External Expertise Sought
Paediatrics
Public health and epidemiology
Rehabilitation medicine
Child mental health
Health systems
Health data and privacy
Relevant SDGs
3, 10, 16, 17
Implementation architecture
Recommended duration: 24 months
- 12 months: A 12-month assessment and protocol phase would map interruptions in paediatric care, immunisation, chronic-condition management and rehabilitation, then co-design referral and continuity protocols with qualified health partners.
- 24 months: A 24-month standard project would pilot continuity-of-care and family-navigation pathways in war-affected communities, train service teams, monitor prevention and referral indicators, and evaluate operational feasibility and equity.
- 36 months: A 36-month scale scenario would extend the tested pathway to multiple regions, integrate preparedness and digital continuity components after privacy review, and generate implementation evidence for wider health-system adoption.
Beneficiaries
Primary beneficiaries
Children in war-affected, displaced, returning or infrastructure-disrupted communities.
Children with chronic conditions, rehabilitation needs or interrupted preventive and immunisation services.
Families and caregivers who must coordinate care across unstable or fragmented pathways.
Secondary beneficiaries
Primary-care, paediatric, rehabilitation and mental-health services seeking stronger continuity and referral systems.
Municipalities and public-health institutions responsible for preparedness, outreach and equitable access.
Consortium profile
The project requires a health-led consortium: TNESC contributes legal, governance, policy and interdisciplinary research capacity, while clinical governance, paediatrics, epidemiology, rehabilitation and mental-health work must be led by qualified medical and public-health institutions.
Required consortium roles
Medical/public-health lead with authority for clinical and epidemiological components.
Paediatric and primary-care service partners in pilot communities.
Rehabilitation medicine and child mental-health specialist partners.
Municipal/public-health implementation and preparedness partners.
TNESC legal, governance, research and policy coordination.
Health-data protection, monitoring/evaluation and ethics expertise.
Budget logic
Main cost drivers
Qualified medical, public-health, rehabilitation and mental-health specialist time.
Service-pathway mapping, field research and community implementation coordination.
Training and referral/continuity protocol deployment in pilot sites.
Prevention, immunisation and preparedness communication materials and outreach.
Secure data, privacy review and digital continuity design where included.
Monitoring, evaluation, health-equity analysis and independent ethics/safeguarding.
A 12-month budget is primarily assessment, protocol and co-design; 24 months adds community pilots, training and evaluation; 36 months adds multi-region scale, stronger preparedness and digital continuity components, with health-service implementation becoming the largest cost driver.
Risks & safeguards
A research-led organisation could be mistaken for a medical provider if clinical language is not carefully bounded by specialist governance.
Require qualified health institutions to lead clinical and epidemiological components, describe TNESC’s role as research/policy coordination, and prohibit public claims that TNESC independently provides medical care.
Health and child data are highly sensitive and can create serious privacy, consent and security risks if collected beyond what the study requires.
Apply data minimisation, ethics review, lawful processing and secure storage; keep clinical records outside the public website and conduct a dedicated privacy/security design review before any digital continuity feature.
War-related infrastructure and staffing disruptions can prevent pilot sites from delivering stable services, making outcome comparisons misleading.
Track interruption exposure explicitly, use multiple sites, analyse implementation fidelity separately from service availability, and include contingency pathways for outages, relocation and remote follow-up.
Vaccination and prevention work can become vulnerable to misinformation or political controversy, undermining trust among families.
Use Ministry/WHO-aligned evidence, qualified public-health communication, transparent source citation and community engagement; do not replace clinical advice with generic website content.
Funding alignment
- World Health Organization Europe — Ukraine Humanitarian Appeal 2026
The project aligns thematically with WHO’s 2026 priorities around essential health care in conflict-affected areas, continuity for displaced people, mental health, referral pathways, prevention and preparedness; this is strategic context only.
- WHO Europe / European Union — DG ENEST–WHO health-system resilience and recovery partnership (2026)
The emphasis on resilient essential services, primary care, medicines and public-health challenges is relevant to the project’s continuity and community-recovery design, while any future funding route would require an appropriate call and health-led consortium.
- WHO Europe / Sida — Ukraine’s Health System Transformation Initiative 2026–2029
The long-term focus on health governance, financing and service delivery for recovery supports the project’s decision to connect child-health continuity with system transformation rather than treat it as a stand-alone humanitarian intervention.
Evidence Sources
- WHO Regional Office for Europe — Ukraine adds HPV vaccine to the national immunization schedule