IHD’s Health Systems Strengthening eNewsletter

January 9, 2015

Abt News, Updates, and Results:

· On Tuesday, December 16th, Abt hosted the 5th in a series of workshops discussing the 9 Principles of Digital Develop­ment, a donor-endorsed list of best practices when using technology in development projects. The workshop, focusing on Principle #5: “Be Da­ta Driven,” was sponsored by Abt’s Reputational Capital Department and the Client Technology Center (CTC), with significant support from International Health Division and International Economic Growth staff. 22 visitors and 15 Abt staff attended the event in person with another approximately 25 people participating remotely. The highlight of the event was an interactive activity that encouraged small groups to explore challenges and solutions related to being data driven. Separate groups tackled data collection, knowledge crea­tion, and analysis to action. To read more about the 9 Principles click here. Here’s an overview of the top challenges identified:

· The Nigeria Daily Independent posted an article highlighting a paper, co-written by Abt Associates’ Jeanna Holtz, which quoted recommendations on microinsurance by the International Labour Organisation (ILO)’s Impact Insurance Facility. Click here to read the article.

· For the first Universal Health Coverage day, on December 12, Abt and the Health Finance and Governance Project (HFG) posted feature stories to highlight our work. Click here to read the Abt feature and click here to read the HFG story.

· In December, HFG supported the Ministries of Health in Barbados and St. Vincent and the Grenadines to complete their first Health Accounts estimation. Health Accounts use an internationally-standardized framework to estimate the amount of health spending in a year, breaking down spending by sources of financing, type of provider, type of activity, and disease/condition.  Information gathered will help inform decisions on how resources are allocated in efforts to achieve universal health coverage. HFG has supported Health Account estimations in four countries in the Caribbean working in partnership with the Center for Health Economics of the University of West Indies. Please email Lisa Tarantino to request a copy of the reports.

· In an effort to provide evidence for USAID/Bangladesh to enhance its work with the Government of Bangladesh’s (GOB) Health, Population, and Nutrition Sector Development Program (HPNSDP), the HFG Project conducted an analysis of USAID funds flowing through the World Bank’s Public International Organization (PIO) grant mechanism. The “USAID-World Bank Public International Organization (PIO) Grant Funding Analysis” report describes the flow of USAID funds and disbursements, details the results of operational plans during specified periods of performance, and summarizes USAID’s contribution to operational plan goals and objectives. The report is attached.

· A recent Strengthening Health Outcomes through the Private Sector (SHOPS) report finds that private financing of pre-service medical education is feasible in certain policy regimes, under certain market conditions, and through certain institutional channels. SHOPS studied pre-service medical education in four African countries with significant shortages of health care professionals (Malawi, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Zambia) and implemented a series of pilot activities to explore the feasibility of introducing private sector health education financing mechanisms. Click here to read the report.

· Pamela Riley, Eric Couper, Joe Contini, Emily Sanders, Pamela Dasher, and Lena Koylada represented Abt  at the December 7-11, 2014 mHealth Summit in D.C., which drew more than 560 participants. The highly interactive event included 7 thematic tracks (finance, evidence, access, design, ecosystems, innovation, and local ownership), application demos, hands-on implementation sessions, and “speed networking” events. The conference summary report is attached.

· Also at the Global mHealth Forum, USAID announced an alliance with Orange, one of the world’s leading telecommunications operators, to develop mhealth innovations to improve patient care across Africa. SHOPS facilitated the formation of the alliance, and is supporting the initial activities to develop a mhealth platform to serve West Africa. The USAID-Orange partnership will focus on improving the quality of and access to health care through collaborative efforts that build on the expertise and resources of both organizations in partnership with national governments. Click here to read the announcement.

· Former Abt colleague Dr. Abebe Alebachew participated on a panel in the December 18 webinar titled Improving Efficiency in Health Systems, hosted by Oxford University. Panelists discussed strategies to improve policy reforms and actions that countries can take to improve efficiency and translate efficiency gains into additional or better services. A webinar summary is attached. Click here to watch the webinar online.

Noteworthy External Articles, Blog Posts, and Videos:

Governance:

· In the December issue of the IMF Finance & Development Magazine, authors Victoria Fan and Amanda Glassman, explain how public health spending is moving from central governments to states and cities in emerging and developing economies. As countries grow economically, two important trends converge as part of a health financing transition—health spending per person increases and out-of-pocket spending on health services decreases. With health systems growing increasingly local, the authors argue for greater attention to the ways subnational governments spend on health and how incentives for performance can cascade from central governments to states. The article is attached.

Health Finance and Economics: 

· The Health Affairs journal published a study evaluating the effects of performance-based financing (PBF) in the central African nation of Burundi by exploiting the staggered rollout of this financing across provinces during 2006–10. Findings included a 36 percent increase in the share of women delivering their babies in a health facility, a 55 percent increase in the share of women using modern contraception and a 45 percent increase in the overall quality score for health care facilities. However, PBF was found to have no effect on the quality of care as reported by patients. These findings suggest that a supply-side intervention such as PBF without accompanying access incentives for the poor is unlikely to improve equity. The report is attached.

Human Resources for Health:

· Last month, the UN General Assembly passed a resolution recognizing the severity of attacks on health workers, facilities, and patients in all circumstances. The resolution demands respect for medical ethics and human rights law, as well as urges states to assure improved access in difficult environments, adopt preventive measures, and tie protection and respect to resilient health systems and universal health care. Although the UN General Assembly has previously addressed the need to protect humanitarian aid workers, this is the first time it has spoken to the problem of violence against all health workers, including those practicing locally. It comes at a time when attacks against vaccinators, doctors, nurses, community health workers, and other health providers have reached devastating heights—as witnessed most recently in Pakistan, South Sudan, Syria, Iraq, Gaza, Turkey, Bahrain, and Guinea. Click here to read the resolution. Click here to read about the fragile states technical session, organized by Abt, that touched on this topic.

E-Health:

· The GSMA Mobile for Development mHealth team recently published their Ghana mHealth Country Feasibility Report, the third in a series of 10 reports for Sub-Saharan Africa (Cote D’Ivoire, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Nigeria, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia). Each report examines the in-country mobile landscape along with the health burden, in terms of nutrition and maternal and child health, and assesses the potential for mHealth services to contribute to public health needs. Click here to read the report.

· The Joint Learning Network for Universal Health Coverage released a new eBook which serves as a reference guide for countries wanting to link their universal health coverage (UHC) and eHealth information systems using a standards-based approach. It provides ministry decision-makers and health system planners with an overview of how information and computer technology (ICT) may be employed to simultaneously support care delivery workflows, provider payment workflows, and the generation of health system management metrics and indicators.  For teams tasked with developing the blueprints for eHealth or UHC initiatives, it describes a straightforward, step-by-step process to guide the development and documentation of ICT health systems and the evolution of these systems over time. Click here for a link to the eBook.

Upcoming Events and Conferences

· The International Health Economics Association released an open call for individual and organized session abstracts for the 2015 Congress.   This year’s congress will be held in Milan between July 12-15, 2015. The theme is Health Economics and Nutrition and the abstract and session deadline has been extended to January 20^th, 2015. Please contact Lauren Peterson and Julie Doherty if you intend to submit an abstract.

· Join Abt Associates on Thursday, January 22 at 12:30 pm for the third in a series of webinars exploring how a risk and resilience framework can help strengthen the ability of vulnerable people and communities around the world to address the challenges they face on a daily basis.  The talk, Boosting Financial Resilience by Helping Households Build Assets and Strengthen their Balance Sheets, will last one hour and feature discussants Ray Boshara, senior adviser and director of the Center for Household Financial Stability at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, and Jonathan Spader, Senior Associate at Abt Associates. Learn more about this webinar series, and view previous webinars by clicking here.

· The International Programs Center for Technical Assistance at the U.S. Census Bureau has just announced its 2015 statistical workshop series, to  be held in Washington, D.C. The workshops are ideal for governments, NGOs, and international aid agencies seeking to build capacity, and conduct surveys and censuses. The training covers the entire survey lifecycle, including mobile data collection (CSPro for Android/ CSEntry), GIS, data processing/editing/tabulation (also CSPro), analysis, and dissemination. Click here for more information. The schedule for the one- to two-week workshops is below:

· CSPro Android for Intermediate Users (June 15 - 26, 2015)

· Demographic Analysis (July 6 - 17, 2015)

· Gender Statistics for Data Users (July 20 - 24, 2015)

· Presentation and Evaluation of Data for Decision Making (July 27 - 31, 2015)

· Introduction to CSPro (August 17 - 21, 2015)

· Introductory GIS for Censuses and Surveys (September 14 - 25, 2015)

· Python Programming for Statistical Geography (October 19 - 23, 2015)

· Introduction to Survey Sampling (October 26 - November 6, 2015) 

Do you have information you’d like to share? Are you aware of new colleagues who would like to be a part of the HSS CoE? Please send news, updates, project results, and names of new colleagues interested in HSS to Julie Doherty and Elizabeth Magnusson.