Washington, D.C. — July 15, 2016 — The Joint Learning Network for Universal Health Coverage has released a report summarizing key findings from a four-country pilot of a new tool that aims to advance UHC through primary health care. The UHC Primary Health Care Self-Assessment Tool helps in-country stakeholders assess whether a country’s or state’s health financing approaches are well aligned with primary health care initiatives and also helps policymakers identify opportunities to improve the alignment of health financing policies with PHC goals.
The report synthesizes experiences from Ghana, Indonesia, Malaysia and two states in India, Kerala and Tamil Nadu. Included in the report is an overview of country pilot processes, achievements and outcomes from the pilots and a summary of findings and key themes.
Case study: India
India piloted the tool in two states, Kerala and Tamil Nadu. Owing to strong primary health care infrastructure, these two states have achieved good health indicators relative to national performance. Nevertheless, the pilots uncovered several areas of misalignment between PHC objectives and health financing policies. In Tamil Nadu, members of the country team noted health education and behavior change communication as major barriers to achieving UHC. Therefore, Tamil Nadu saw the implementation of the tool as an important step in advancing PHC-oriented UHC.
Following the pilot, the Tamil Nadu country team proposed running a similar pilot at the district level to better understand the severity of misalignments across the spectrum of well to poor performing districts, with the aim of devising district-level interventions for improvement. This bottom-up approach could allow the state to identify potential areas to better align PHC goals at a smaller subunit that can be scaled at the state and even national level.
The Joint Learning Network for Universal Health Coverage
The Joint Learning Network for Universal Health Coverage (JLN), of which R4D is a founding participant, is an innovative, country-driven network of practitioners and policymakers from around the globe who co-develop global knowledge products that help bridge the gap between theory and practice to extend coverage to more than three billion people. All of the JLN’s activities are prioritized, shaped, led, and co-facilitated by JLN member countries. Through a unique model for joint problem solving—which includes multilateral workshops, country learning exchanges, and virtual dialogue—JLN members build on real experience to produce and experiment with new ideas and tools for expanding health coverage.
