News & Events


NEWS September 17, 2020

Webinar: Coordinating Multi-sectoral, Multi-level Pandemic Responses

JLN Network Manager

The current COVID-19 pandemic has proven to be devastating for health systems globally. To slow the spread of the virus and to reduce its toll, country leaders must manage strong systems-focused, multi-sectoral coordination, planning, and monitoring. Countries are asking how to create and manage the cross-sectoral teams needed to mount a coordinated response to the pandemic, including developing pandemic/epidemic preparedness and response strategies and strengthening coordination across sectors and across different levels of government to ensure a prompt and effective response. Join the Joint Learning Network for Universal Health Coverage (JLN) and the Health Systems Strengthening Accelerator (Accelerator) on September 30, 2020 for a webinar to learn about some of the ways countries are coordinating their national COVID-19 responses, including the Accelerator’s support to Ghana; share insights on the priority challenges and key questions countries face; and learn about an upcoming virtual collaborative. Date: September 30, 2020 Time: 12:00 PM – 1:30 PM UTC Click here to register. Registered participants will receive a Zoom link two days prior to the event. Panelists Professor Samba Sow is the World Health Organization’s Director General’s Special Envoy for COVID-19 for Africa and will also be serving as a technical facilitator for the COVID Learning Collaborative convened jointly between R4D and the JLN with funding from BMGF. Prof. Samba is currently working at the Centre for Vaccine Development (CVD) in Mali. CVD is one of three sites in Mali with capacity for COVID-19 testing, and is Mali’s leading center for epidemiolocal surveillance, laboratory sciences, field surveys and clinical trials. Mr. Joseph Addo-Yobo is the Executive Director of Total Family Health Organisation (TFHO), an indigenous non-governmental organization in Ghana. Prior to joining TFHO he led and managed several USAID projects across Africa forging innovative with governments, non-governmental organizations and private companies for the sustainable delivery of health services and products. When Ghana reported its’ first case of COVID-19, Joseph volunteered as the Program Manager at the Office of the Presidential Coordinator for the Country’s COVID-19 response. Professor Jongsu Ryu is a Professor at the Graduate School of Public Health at Yonsei University, Seoul teaching at the Global Health Security/ Health Policy & Financing Master’s degree program targeting mid-career public health professionals. Professor Raquel Duarte is a pulmonologist and a Professor in the Medical School and Institute of Public Health of Porto University, and head of the Infectious Diseases Research Group at Institute of Public Health, Porto, Portugal. She was an advisor to the regional COVID-19 response in Portugal’s North region, organizing a multi-disciplinary team of mathematicians, public health professionals and communication experts to develop and resource response strategies, develop and execute communication plans on television and social media, and organize multi-sectoral stakeholders and responses for transport, hospitality and nursing homes industries. Following the webinar, the Accelerator, led by Results for Development, in partnership with the JLN will launch a 6-month virtual collaborative focused on multi-sectoral, multi-level coordination of pandemic responses that will facilitate cross-country exchange on what has worked, and not worked, and generate practical guidance.

NEWS August 5, 2020

COVID-19 Surfaces New Directions for Old Challenges: Three Lasting Ways to Improve Global Health Procurement

JLN Network Manager

Julia Kaufman, Janeen Madan Keller, Prashant Yadav, and Kalipso Chalkidou co-authored this post, which originally appeared on the Center for Global Development’s website.   Effective and efficient procurement of health products—medicines, diagnostics, and devices—is a critical function of all strong health systems. The pandemic has exacerbated long-standing challenges—as highlighted by a recent CGD Working Group—in the purchasing of both COVID-related emergency supplies and other essential health products. Procurement challenges in the context of COVID-19 range from disruptions to sourcing active pharmaceutical ingredients, export restrictions, and transport interruptions to quality assurance issues, reduced household income to cover out of pocket spending, and domestic financing pressures amidst uncertainty in the future of health aid. To harness COVID-19 as a catalyst for better procurement practices, the World Bank’s Health Financing Global Solutions Group, the Global Financing Facility, and the Joint Learning Network’s Efficiency Collaborative hosted an online event in early July. The webinar, chaired by one of us (Chalkidou), brought together experts from the Philippines and Thailand to showcase ongoing improvements to national procurement systems, alongside presentations of CGD research from two of us (Yadav and Madan Keller) on broader opportunities to deliver access to affordable, high-quality health products. Here are three takeaways. 1. Collaborate across countries to pool procurement Amidst uncoordinated scrambles for emergency supplies, hoarding, and even bidding wars, the pandemic has put the importance of achieving economies of scale in the limelight. Fragmented demand across purchasing entities can lead to higher transaction costs to serve these markets, which can often be passed on to purchasers and eventually to consumers. Pooled procurement or other forms of cooperative purchasing across countries offers one way to aggregate demand, increase purchaser bargaining power, and better organize procurement-related functions like horizon scanning and information-sharing about the supplier landscape (see Figure 1). The Africa CDC’s newly launched Africa Medical Supplies Platform (AMSP)—an online marketplace that pools orders for COVID-19 diagnostics and medical equipment—is a promising development with ample potential. But long-standing challenges stemming from myriad political, legal, and regulatory barriers (e.g., national industrial policies that favor domestic suppliers or the desire to exercise country preferences in product choice) will need to be tackled for such initiatives to have lasting benefits. Whether this platform goes beyond COVID-19 to successfully facilitate purchasing of other essential medicines at scale and effectively incorporates related functions such as health technology assessment remains to be seen. As the AMSP continues to evolve, different pooling mechanisms at the regional-level alongside donor-supported mechanisms at the global level, each with diverse organizational arrangements, could offer lessons about what has and has not worked. These collaborative purchasing efforts will also be increasingly critical as middle-income countries navigate health financing transitions, as emphasized by CGD’s Working Group. The AMSP and other COVID-19 procurement initiatives like the ACT Accelerator also elevate the importance of coordination and information-sharing from the get-go to identify gaps and avoid overlap. Figure 1. Different pooling activities and types of organizational arrangements Source: Nemzoff, Chalkidou, and Over 2019, adapted from Espín et al. 2016. 2. Embed resilience in procurement contracting COVID-19 has illustrated that buying from the lowest-cost supplier may come at the expense of other procurement outcomes like quality, supply security, speed, or resilience. Some suppliers may be able to guarantee or demonstrate a degree of resilience based on past performance—such as the ability to meet a certain portion of a demand surge within a guaranteed lead time. But not all buyers may be willing to pay higher prices to prepare for and respond to crises, reflecting a classic public good problem as colleagues have argued. Nevertheless, this specific metric is just one potential example; other relevant dimensions of resilience include resilience to production disruption and resilience to sourcing scarce raw material. In reality, purchasers tend to lack granular, applicable metrics and sufficient data to assess and maximize relevant resilience attributes as part of supplier selection (see Figure 2). More and better empirical evidence on how to measure resilience before stress is applied to the system is needed. Further, while open contracting can expedite efficient procurement, these approaches need to be balanced with assuring that procurement regulations and scrutiny do not become obstacles to assessing and incorporating resilience into contracting decisions. Procurement agents should have the flexibility to comprehensively consider various dimensions of resilience and responsiveness as part of bid evaluation decisions in order to sustain and expand health product access in times of crisis (and “normal” times as well). Another tactical area of procurement altered by COVID-19 is split awards. At the national level, these awards may need to more explicitly incorporate ways to split overall procurement volume between multiple suppliers. And while many are interested in “shortening” supply chains, geographic diversification can help to address potential supply chain risks and disruptions down the line. Recommendations on the ideal number of suppliers for each product category and the best delivery frequency to buffer stocks are still evolving, but some experts have recommended buying smaller quantities more frequently where possible, with weekly deliveries as opposed to annual ones. Better resilience heuristics, flexible governance arrangements, and nuanced financing regulations can enable more resilient global health procurement going forward. Figure 2. Supplier Selection Attributes Source: Prashant Yadav 3. Consider the optimal locus of specific procurement functions Procurement involves a gamut of functions, extending from market intelligence, technology horizon scanning and product selection to price negotiation, ordering, contract management, and performance monitoring. Determining the optimal locus of specific procurement functions requires careful consideration of tradeoffs between local agility and information versus economies of scale and scope. Large national purchasers may be better suited to certain procurement-related functions, such as conducting market intelligence and price negotiation. For others, such as placing orders under negotiated contract terms, subnational actors might be better positioned. Without local information and knowledge, purchasing decisions are at risk of being removed from the relevant health system context, as has occurred with the so-called medical equipment graveyard. During the event, Somruethai Supungul of Thailand’s National Health Security Office outlined how regional and hospital-level procurement are used for broad essential medicines. However, central procurement

NEWS May 22, 2020

Get to Know the NODE

JLN Network Manager
Infographic save the date for June 4, 2020 Get to Know the NODE event

June 4, 2020 | Virtual

NEWS

Responding to COVID-19 while Maintaining Essential Health Services

JLN Network Manager
Infographic save the date for June 4, 2020 Get to Know the NODE event

On May 1, 2020, the Steering Group of the Joint Learning Network for Universal Health Coverage (JLN) approved the launch of a new COVID-19 Network for Open Dialogue and Exchange (NODE) to support countries in accessing, sharing, and discussing COVID-19-related knowledge. This new initiative will expand the network’s ability to respond quickly to countries’ needs for practical knowledge about pandemic response and maintaining essential health services during pandemics. Introducing the COVID-19 NODE Meeting evolving needs in COVID-19. For more than 10 years, the JLN’s country-driven and country-led joint learning approach has connected hundreds of practitioners and policymakers to co-create practical solutions to the shared health system challenges they face when moving to universal health coverage. Building on these values, JLN member countries have identified urgent challenges posed by the coronavirus pandemic. The COVID-19 NODE will bring countries together to respond to these challenges, with opportunities for learning and exchange. And as country priorities shift, so will the NODE’s topics, events, and resources to provide more opportunities for joint learning and more close-to-real-time and rapid knowledge sharing and joint problem-solving using effective virtual engagement tools and approaches. Broader participation. The coronavirus recognizes no borders and is impacting every country around the globe. The NODE is therefore meant to be inclusive and so non-JLN member participants will be welcome to connect, share and learn. New partnerships. The JLN has traditionally enjoyed a broad network of partners and the NODE will continue to draw on support of and collaboration with the Global Financing Facility, USAID, the World Bank, and others. We intend to expand these partnerships given the need of countries and partners to make good policy and implementation decisions during this pandemic. Please visit the website for details of evolving partnerships and the learning opportunities they will provide members. The Technical Agenda The JLN technical agenda is adapting to respond to urgent changes in countries’ priorities to address the COVID-19 response, while also maintaining our foundational focus on universal health coverage (UHC), including through work on how to maintain primary health care services through the pandemic period. Using feedback from country members, some JLN teams are shifting their focus entirely from topics countries have deprioritized to emerging technical topics, some teams are continuing their work with slight modifications to incorporate COVID-19 related themes, and new teams are being formed to take up COVID-related topics that have not previously been on the agenda. While this remains a work in progress, examples of existing JLN learning activities adapting in response to COVID-19 include: Pilot of an Empanelment Assessment Tool – shifting to more immediate COVID-19 related themes Population Targeting – continuing with adaptation Domestic Resource Mobilization – continuing with adaptation Systematic Prioritization and Efficiency – continuing with adaptation Primary Health Care Financing and Payment – continuing with adaptation Private Sector Engagement – continuing with adaptation Primary Health Care Initiative – new topics coming soon Medicines and Pricing – new topics coming soon Managing NCDs through Innovative Primary Care – new topics coming soon Multi-sector, Multi-level Coordination for Pandemic Response – new topic coming soon We expect in addition to be adding new topics on human resources for health, supply chain management, strategic communications, infection prevention and control, telehealth, and others, all as prioritized by the Steering Group and Country Core Groups. Going Digital to Meet Current Challenges and Work More Efficiently With travel restricted, but the need to connect, share, and learn across countries greater than ever, the JLN is adapting to new ways of working together. The NODE will curate practical knowledge from country experiences and make available other new online resources. Moreover, technical teams will be modifying facilitation approaches to take advantage of best-in-class virtual engagement techniques and tools to support practitioner-to-practitioner learning. Get Involved As the JLN launches the COVID-19 NODE, there are many ways to get involved, learn more, and stay up-to-date: Save the date June 4, 2020 (pre-register, below) for a discussion about how countries can solve health system challenges through joint learning and to learn more about the COVID-19 NODE. Create an account on the JLN website to access discussion forums and the latest network announcements. Contact the JLN Network Manager about how to partner, support, and engage with the COVID-19 NODE. Pre-register to Get to Know the NODE | June 4, 2020 Loading…

NEWS May 8, 2020

The Path Toward UHC May Look Different in Each Country, but the Lessons that Emerge can be Universal

JLN Network Manager

The term “global community” may, at first, seem paradoxical.