Collaboration between the different Clusters is encouraged at all levels (local, national, regional and global) to ensure coherence in achieving common objectives, avoiding duplication and ensuring areas of need are prioritized.

The Health Cluster most frequently engages with the Nutrition (Cluster lead UNICEF), the Food Security (Cluster co-leads FAO and WFP), as well as the WASH (Cluster lead UNICEF) clusters, as good nutrition and WASH are essential for good health, and vice versa. However engagement with other clusters such as the Logistics Cluster (WFP cluster lead), to gain support in transporting medicines and supplies, particularly to remote areas, and the Emergency Shelter Cluster (UNHCR and IFRC co-cluster leads), for example in ensuring tents are heated to avoid spread of disease, as well as all other Clusters are frequent and encouraged.

At global level, the Global Health Cluster engages in inter-cluster coordination mechanisms with the Global Cluster Coordinators in Geneva.

Crisis-affected people have multiple needs that require humanitarian assistance simultaneously. In addition, some of these needs are inter-linked and inter-related. Responding to people’s multiple needs in an appropriate manner requires joint action and coordination across the humanitarian community. To facilitate joint prioritization of needs and a joint response toward achieving a common objective, four clusters, Health, Nutrition Food Security, and Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH), came together at the global level in 2022, to establish an inter-sectoral collaboration platform, the ICSC.  

This initiative is meant to increase synergy and collaboration between the participating clusters to address overlapping needs of population affected by conflicts, disease outbreaks, droughts, and other specific crises, and does not replace existing multi-cluster coordination mechanisms, usually headed by UNOCHA. The ICSC aspires to incorporate other clusters as participants in due course.

Guidance and other Publications

The Global Health and WASH Clusters undertook a joint project to develop strategies to improve the coordinated and integrated responses to cholera outbreaks in countries in humanitarian crisis.