After action review
An After Action Review (AAR) is a qualitative review of actions taken to respond to a public health event or following a project or a public health intervention as a means of identifying and documenting best practices demonstrated and challenges encountered during the response to the event or the implementation of the project. The AAR process involves a structured facilitated discussion or experience sharing among responders to critically and systematically review what was in place before the response and could have been used, what actually happened during the response, what went well, what went less well, why events occurred as they did, and how to improve. It is an important management tool for continuous performance improvement and learning.
More specifically, the objectives of an AAR are:
- to review actions undertaken at each phase of managing a public health event, to identify what worked well, what worked less well and why;
- to demonstrate the functionality of national capacities in preparing for, detecting and responding to a public health event;
- to identify the corrective actions needed to institutionalize any lessons emerging from the management of public health events;
- to address the challenges made evident through the AAR.
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Key publications
Independent External Review of EPI-VPD surveillance in Thailand, 1-8 September 2025
Thailand’s Expanded Programme on Immunization (EPI) and vaccine-preventable disease (VPD) surveillance system underwent a comprehensive external...
The Summary of recommendations for quality of care in cataract surgery management, developed by the World Health Organization (WHO), provides practical,...
AAR online training
This course has been designed to introduce the learners to the knowledge and skills needed for a successful management and facilitation of an After Action Review (AAR) using a working group format.
The learning objectives are the following:
- Explain the context and the purpose of an AAR
- Describe the general of the AAR process (by using the working group format)
- Describe the general of the AAR process (by using the working group format).
- Distinguish roles and responsibilities of facilitators in the AAR process and describe the techniques for participatory facilitation.
- Indicate the resources available for conducting an AAR and know where to find them.
- Expected audience: IHR NFPs, WHO staff, Health professionals and partners, any person interested in reviewing any emergency response.
