How can smart health financing and integrated care come together to deliver better health outcomes and accelerate progress toward Universal Health Coverage (UHC)? This was the central question explored during a high-level side event at the 79th World Health Assembly (WHA79) in Geneva,...
With the donor funding reductions and challenging economic times, many countries have found themselves in a challenging situation on what gets funded and how to finance their health system. Mobilizing additional domestic funding for health in Low- and Middle-Income Countries (LMICs) is challenged by highly informal economies, narrow tax bases, which constrains revenue collection, increasing debt, and limited fiscal space. Almost all LMICs are strategizing how to close funding gaps caused by reduced funding for health and how strategic purchasing approaches such as government-led contracting with the private sector can play an important role by offsetting challenges and augmenting both service delivery and financing in LMICs. Contracting has the potential to make the health system more efficient through delivering better value (higher quality care at lower or more efficient costs) achieving more health for the money.
The JLN is a country-driven network of practitioners and policymakers from 40 countries across the globe who come together to problem solve, co-develop global knowledge products, and implement solutions that help bridge the gap between theory and practice. This collective wisdom of network members is harnessed to address complex health systems challenges ultimately accelerating progress towards Universal Health Coverage (UHC). The joint learning approach evolved over a period since 2010, when JLN was launched, drawing on several global best practices in action-oriented adult learning. It emphasizes a locally led approach, where country practitioners determine priorities, set the learning agenda, and co-develop effective strategies and promising practices. Knowledge exchange among countries is organized into learning exchanges (3-6 months) and collaboratives (18-24 months). Technical facilitators play a critical role, providing organizational capacity and analytical rigour to help countries frame issues and articulate their insights in a structured manner. The JLN encourages flexible thinking, enabling practitioners to synthesize new knowledge into knowledge products – including tools, assessments, policy analysis frameworks, decision-making tools, implementation guidance, and case studies – that serve the needs of the country participants who co-created them and become global public goods for the global health community.
Enhancing capacities in health systems strengthening is critical to achieve sustainable health systems reforms towards Universal health coverage (UHC). Traditional methods for capacity building and knowledge exchange often adopt didactic approaches. They assume that technical requirements are static and the need for tailored solutions is for specified timeframes for policymakers and practitioners. However, the ever-evolving technical obstacles in achieving reform objectives and the diverse spectrum of policymakers engaged in this process challenge such conventional approaches.
