The National Action Plan for Health Security (NAPHS) is a country owned, multi-year, planning process that can accelerate the implementation of IHR core capacities, and is based on an all-hazards, whole-of-government, One Health participatory approach. It captures national priorities for health security, brings sectors together, identifies partners and allocates resources for health security capacity development.

The NAPHS and equivalent health security strategies and plans are critical for ensuring that national capacities in health emergency prevention, preparedness, response and recovery are planned, built, strengthened and sustained in order to achieve national, regional and global health security and therefore keep the world safe, serve the vulnerable and promote health. In order to integrate IHR capacity building within national health systems and primary health care, health security planning is more effective if it is well aligned with, and embedded in, existing National Health Policies, Strategies and Plans (NHPSP), as well as with other programmatic and multi-hazard or disease-/hazard-specific plans. A health system that has the surge capacity to respond to pandemics and concurrent emergencies associated with natural hazards, conflicts and other disease outbreaks is essential for ensuring a strong emergency response and for limiting the spread of future disease outbreaks.

The Technical Advisory Group on National Action Plans for Health Security will act as an advisory body to WHO in this field.  Members of the Technical Advisory Group on National Action Plans for Health Security will have a responsibility to provide WHO with high quality, well considered advice, guidance and recommendations that are based on evidence from country experiences on the challenges, best practices, successes, barriers and need to support the implementation of the NAPHS, but also will take into consideration the diversity of countries profiles, vulnerabilities and coping capacities.

The Advisory Group has no executive or regulatory function. Its role is solely to provide advice and recommendations through the Country Assessment and Planning Team to the Assistant Director-General of WHO, Health Security Preparedness (HSP) and includes providing advice and recommendations on preparedness matters as needed.