Health Systems

Optimizing Performance and Quality: Stages, Steps, and Tools

Optimizing Performance and Quality (OPQ) is a stakeholder-driven, cyclical process for analyzing human and organizational performance and setting up interventions to improve performance and quality or build on strengths and successes. It has been used by country leaders in over 15 countries to strengthen health-sector governance through greater accountability and transparency, broadened partnerships, and measurable results in improved service quality. The OPQ process builds capacity within an organization to recognize and address problems or performance gaps on an ongoing basis. Each of the seven stages provides evidence-based guidance and steps to follow, with a suite of tools to help users through the process.

FBO Contributions to Scaling Up the Health Workforce: Challenges and Opportunities

This presentation was given at the CapacityPlus knowledge-sharing and dissemination event, A Strong Health Workforce for Africa: Building Effective Partnerships with Faith-Based Organizations, held on October 27, 2014, at the National Press Club in Washington, DC.

How Can FBOs Advance HRH and HSS More Effectively through Engagement with International Donors?

This presentation was given at the CapacityPlus knowledge-sharing and dissemination event, A Strong Health Workforce for Africa: Building Effective Partnerships with Faith-Based Organizations, held on October 27, 2014, at the National Press Club in Washington, DC.

The Contribution of Indigenous Faith-Based Organizations to African National Health Systems

This presentation was given at the CapacityPlus knowledge-sharing and dissemination event, A Strong Health Workforce for Africa: Building Effective Partnerships with Faith-Based Organizations, held on October 27, 2014, at the National Press Club in Washington, DC.

Health Professional School Leadership and Health Sector Reform, Performance, and Practice

In the transition to the post-Millennium Development Goals era, many low and middle-income countries will be making significant shifts in their national health policies. The leadership that is drawn upon to make policy changes tends to be in ministries of health, flagship hospitals, physicians and nurses associations, and social protection entities. Health professional schools are an additional and valuable—yet often overlooked—source of leadership in health reform and health policy-making. This technical brief highlights some examples of how the education and research leadership of health professional schools has engaged, influenced, or obtained resources from national policy-makers and others with significant influence on the health sector. The brief also reviews instances in which different health educational institutions and professional associations have worked to shape national responses to health system needs.

Community Health Workers for Universal Health Care Coverage: From Fragmentation to Synergy

This article—in a special issue of the Bulletin of the World Health Organization launched at the Third Global Forum on Human Resources for Health—explores the important role of community health workers in the effort to achieve universal health coverage. A range of current challenges related to inconsistent support for community health workers and failure to integrate them into national health systems has limited their potential contributions to primary health care. The article emphasizes the need for stronger public-sector leadership and more synergy among partners in better supporting and integrating community health workers as integral members of health teams that can increase accessibility and use of services.

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