Health Systems
Ayesha de Costa is an associate professor of Global Health and Senior Lecturer at the Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm. She begins this lecture by noting the increasing importance of emergency obstetric care (EmOC) which can only work if it is of a high quality. EmOC should be able to provide: injectable antibiotics, injectable anticonvulsants, injectable oxytocics,… Read more
DFID believes that PBR is an innovative delivery mechanism which can, in the right circumstances, be used to sharpen incentives for suppliers, and partner governments, to perform. Where it works best, PBR can shift the focus of commissioners and suppliers from inputs to outcomes – leading to real, tangible, measurable improvements in the areas which… Read more
DfID is developing a framework for health systems strengthening. This roundtable discussion in June 2015 brought together HEART members to draw on their research findings to inform the framework. It was a response to an enquiry into DFID funded work to inform DFID programmes in a review. This HEART talks includes the presentations from three… Read more
Although health interventions start with good intentions to develop services for disadvantaged populations, they often distort the health market, making the delivery or financing of services difficult once the intervention is over: a condition called the ‘Develop-Distort Dilemma’ (DDD). In this paper, the authors describe how to examine whether a proposed intervention may develop or… Read more
The world’s population is ageing rapidly, with the over-60 population growing fastest. Since 2000, there have been more people aged 60 or over than children under 5. A rapidly ageing population presents large and unique challenges. This briefing discusses the results of pilot healthcare programmes in four countries, Cambodia, Mozambique, Peru and Tanzania. The findings… Read more
The Alliance for Health Policy and Systems Research (AHPSR) is an international independently governed collaboration situated in the Health Systems and Innovation cluster at the World Health Organization’s (WHO) headquarters in Geneva. Its overarching goal is to improve the health sectors of low and middle-income countries (LMICs) through the promotion and use of empirical health… Read more
This report reviews the evidence of the cost effectiveness of village health workers. It found that the literature tends to use the term community health workers (CHWs) generally to encompass village health workers and other regional variations of a similar role. The reviews on this topic often use the term broadly where country programs operate… Read more
This technical taskforce report focuses on providing broad cost guidance, deployment strategy and operational design considerations for Community Health Worker (CHW) subsystems as part of health system strengthening to achieve the MDGs in Africa. These considerations are summarised in the following 5 themes: Tight linkages with appropriately-financed local primary health care systems are crucial to… Read more
The purpose of this assignment was to support the Human Resources for Health (HRH) Donor Working Group to review the implications of the introduction of the medium-level pay scale for health workers on each of the programmes they fund in Somalia (with a focus on the Global Fund, GAVI, JHNP, Health Consortium for the Somali… Read more
This publication is about 24 developing countries that have embarked on the long journey toward universal health coverage (UHC) following a bottom-up approach, with a special focus on the poor and vulnerable. The publication documents and analyses the experiences of these countries based on a systematic data collection effort that sought to capture in great… Read more
Mozambique health system reconstruction supports the conclusion that the reconstruction of health systems is mainly “gender blind”. Policy-makers in Mozambique have not adequately considered the role of gender in contributing to health or addressed women’s and men’s different health needs. Despite government commitment to gender mainstreaming, the health system is far from gender equitable. Donors… Read more