Aims & Objectives: Children with acute critical illness in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) are often managed in hospitals with different capacities for providing critical care. Elements that contribute to critical care capacity can include infrastructure, personnel, resources, processes, education and training. This work outlines the development of a pediatric Critical CAre Resource Evaluation (CritCARE) tool which hospitals across resource-variable settings can use to objectively assess their baseline pediatric critical care capacity and identify opportunities for improvement. Methods: A scoping literature review was performed to identify articles published between 2002-2022 describing existing classification schemes for levels of critical care. A group of interdisciplinary, international experts in pediatric critical care medicine (N=29) organized the elements and themes contained within the classification schemes to create a foundational framework of domains and subdomains for the CritCARE tool. Results: Of 1,947 abstracts screened, 27 studies qualified for concept extraction. The expert group identified 5 levels of pediatric critical care services, including: advanced, comprehensive, general, basic, and none. Categorization of critical care resources by level-of-care resulted in 5 domains and 16 subdomains for the CritCARE framework (Table 1).Conclusions: We propose an evidence-informed framework to define pediatric critical care levels and assess capacity at hospitals in resource-variable settings including LMICs. Next, the CritCARE tool will be piloted across 46 global PARITY (Pediatric Acute Critical Illness Study) centers for usability. This tool represents a starting point to help hospitals and health systems identify gaps, self-classify, benchmark and standardize care based on level of services and local resources. Keywords: Global Health, Pediatric Critical Care Medicine, Intensive Care, Metrics