BACKGROUND:
Populations on the move face persistent health inequities from mobility, legal precarity, social exclusion, and poor access to services. These intersect with fragile health systems, amplifying risks for mobile groups and hosts. Equity-oriented, multisectoral approaches are needed to strengthen systems, promote social cohesion, and share benefits. Anticipatory approaches and Early Action Protocols (EAPs) shift from reactive responses to proactive health systems action, triggered when needed near local capacity. Yet, their equity potential for mobile populations is underexplored.

METHODS:
This panel unites practitioners, policymakers, humanitarian and health actors to share lessons from the intersection between health, migration and anticipatory action. It covers risk-based trigger design, needs-based early action selection, and decision-support tools linking local branches to national coordination. Panellists explore how to integrate anticipatory approaches into public health practice and how contextual factors (such as health system capacity, political sensitivity, mobility patterns), together with epidemiological data, can inform confidential or public anticipatory actions.

RESULTS:
Results show through comparative reflections and dialogue, how early, coordinated action can reduce health risks and generate benefits for both mobile populations and host communities, especially risk‑ and needs‑based methods are valuable in trigger design and early action selection. By integrating contextual factors such as political sensitivity, variable data quality, mobility patterns, and health system resilience into trigger design, the discussion shows how confidential or phased activation can protect vulnerable groups earlier, minimise disruptions to preventive and primary health services, and generate co‑benefits for host communities without exceeding local health system capacity.

CONCLUSIONS:
Anticipatory approaches and EAPs advance health equity when reframed as systems-level, risk- and needs-based models. Grounded in multisectoral, locally led action; auxiliary national roles; and tools operationalizing context, Djibouti and other African experiences show early action protects mobile populations while building resilient, inclusive health systems for all.