The past three years have witnessed one of the worst humanitarian refugee crisis with flows from conflict countries peaking in late 2015-early 2016 and millions of people seeking refuge in, mainly European, countries. Due to the hardships they face on their journey, refugees are at greater risk of health problems, such as exposure to communicable diseases and psychosocial and mental distress. To cope with the immediate health needs of refugees, OECD countries have organised medical screening programmes and emergency health care provision. In the medium term, providing better information about health care entitlements and about how health care systems are organised, facilitating outreach services and offering interpreting services are key helping immigrants’ access care. In the long term, health care systems will need to be resilient and better prepared to respond to future refugee arrivals. This edition of Migration Policy Debates reviews current challenges and good practices for making OECD health systems more resilient in the face of a refugee crisis, drawing from a debate at a joint OECD, the World Bank and the Center for Mediterranean Integration conference on “Human Resources for Health (HRH): Integration of Refugees into Host Community Health Systems”.