Having consensus on what constitutes a good health system assessment (HSA) and approaches to carry out HSAs jointly are important steps towards better coordination of health systems strengthening efforts and accelerating progress towards UHC.

It is well recognised that countries face challenges when varying HAS approaches with a wide range of objectives are used. This has led to a lack of comparability of results across time as each approach comes with a different set of assumptions and weighting of issues.

During multistakeholder consultations in 2016, UHC2030 partners gave broad support for a technical working group to examine the pros and cons of the various options for harmonization, and eventually develop the options chosen. In addition, several UHC2030 partners have expressed the need to discuss and develop common benchmarking for health system performance assessment. 

Discussions leading to establishing UHC2030 made a clear call to form a UHC 2030 technical working group to further elaborate on:

  • The specifics of HSA harmonization and alignment
  • A common understanding of measuring health systems performance towards UHC.

Download: Terms of reference

Objectives

The overall aim of the technical working group will be to have an overview of options for doing a HSA, with guidance on how to undertake country-led and country tailored processes. 

Specific objective are:

  • To recommend options for conducting a more harmonised and aligned HSA, with practical guidance on the optimal country-led and demand-driven process.
  • To recommend a common, adaptable annotated framework for health systems performance assessment.

It is hoped that by fulfilling the above-mentioned aims, HSAs will serve countries’ health systems progress and truly contribute to improved health systems performance while reducing the often heavy administrative burden.

Download: Harmonizing and Aligning Health Systems Assessments, background paper

For further information please contact: 

Dheepa Rajan, WHO, rajand@who.int

Julia Sallaku, WHO sallakuj@who.int