The HEPR Program fills a critical gap in the World Bank support for building capacity for health emergency preparedness and response. It is the first and only World Bank funding mechanism exclusively dedicated to health emergency support for countries, territories, and regions.

With a focus on catalyzing, complementing, and connecting, the HEPR Program provides financing to fill gaps and to jump-start critical and innovative work so regions and countries can act together, fast, spur innovation, build cohesive and interoperable capacity, and attract other funding.

The HEPR Program is specifically designed to:

• Build interoperable and cohesive capacity for countries and regions to work seamlessly together for resilient essential health services and health emergencies;
   
• Coalesce, connect, collaborate and coordinate across sectors to ensure that countries invest in preparedness-specific and preparedness supportive functions that can be deployed to prevent, detect and respond to health emergencies;
   
• Support at-risk countries and territories not eligible for other types of World Bank financing; and
   
• Complement and coordinate its work with other relevant financing mechanisms across the World Bank including operations financing through the International Development Association for the poorest countries and COVID-19-specific mechanisms, as well as key trust funds such as the Policy and Human Resource Development trust fund and the Global Facility Disaster Reduction and Recovery.