Resilience Exchange | Issue 01

Healthcare Resiliency in Practice: Global Advising, Cyber Exercises, and What's Ahead

Welcome to the first issue of  our Resilience Exchange! A monthly newsletter from Wakefield Brunswick designed to make healthcare business continuity and integrated resiliency practical, understandable, and useful.

Business continuity is more than maintaining a binder or meeting a regulatory requirement. It is the ability to sustain essential patient care, clinical operations, and support services when disruption occurs, and to recover safely and effectively.

We are also excited to announce the launch of our NEW website and the opening of Wakefield Brunswick’s new office in Montreal, Canada. This location strengthens our ability to support healthcare organizations and partners across North America and internationally.

Expanding Our International Healthcare Advising Services

Our Montreal office will serve as a Canadian base for expanding Wakefield Brunswick’s international advising services. This work will focus on healthcare business continuity and resiliency, international health and sustainable development, health equity, and international disaster response.

These services build on the long-standing international work of our founder, Angela Devlen, and the experience of our CEO, Chris Sonne, in healthcare preparedness, continuity, and disaster management. Our senior advisor, Lori Wallman, is also pursuing her DrPH(c) in Leadership for International Health and Sustainable Development, further supporting WB’s growing focus in this area.

Together, our team brings practical healthcare experience and a global perspective to organizations working to strengthen health systems, protect vulnerable populations, and maintain essential services during complex disruptions.

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Turning Cybersecurity Risks Into Readiness

Healthcare organizations cannot fully understand their readiness for a cyberattack, technology outage, or extended downtime by reviewing plans alone. Realistic exercises allow teams to practice how they will continue caring for patients when systems, information, and normal workflows are disrupted.

Wakefield Brunswick designs and facilitates exercises ranging from discussion-based tabletop exercises to operational exercises that test real processes, decisions, communications, and coordination. These exercises bring together clinical, operational, cybersecurity, information technology, disaster recovery, emergency management, and executive stakeholders.

WB has conducted exercises for regional and national health systems, major healthcare coalitions, and individual facilities across the country. As healthcare organizations navigate Hospital Preparedness Program exercise and evaluation expectations, WB can support the full process—from planning and scenario development through conduct, evaluation, after-action reporting, and improvement planning. Our decades of experience help ensure exercises are realistic, engaging, and valuable long after the day they are completed.

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Meet WB at NHCPC 2026

The Wakefield Brunswick team is looking forward to speaking and exhibiting at the National Healthcare Coalition Preparedness Conference, taking place December 1–3, 2026, at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center in National Harbor, Maryland, just outside Washington, D.C. The conference brings together healthcare coalitions, emergency managers, public health professionals, healthcare organizations, and government partners to share practical strategies for preparedness and resilience.

We hope you will join us as we explore “The ROI of Business Continuity in Healthcare”—including how strong continuity programs protect patient care, support critical operations, reduce avoidable costs, and help leaders make better-informed investments. We look forward to connecting with colleagues and continuing the conversation in National Harbor.

Editorial note: I used “HPP exercise and evaluation expectations” rather than presenting the requirements as one universal rule, since specific requirements can vary by recipient, funding cycle, and award guidance.

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