Conclusion

For a country to effectively and sustainably respond to universal health coverage goals, many actors must be involved in the deliberations and decision-making process, including health professional school leaders. Although health professional schools are often overlooked or sidelined and generally remain underutilized in terms of health sector reform potential, they bear the brunt of responding to new national universal health coverage goals as the entities responsible for producing skilled health workers, conducting essential research, and setting guidelines and the highest standards for clinical care.

The reasons for insufficient formal engagement of leaders of medical, nursing, midwifery, and other health sciences schools are complex. Many policy-makers and politicians responsible for the full range of national finance decisions and sectoral issues and priorities remain insufficiently familiar with the role that health professional schools can and already do play as well as their direct and indirect contributions to health system development. Ministries of health and the health care sector are often not effective in bringing together various constituencies and health interests (professions, industries, associations, and health professional schools) to speak out on critical health issues with the common objective of improving health outcomes. Additionally, the political landscape is changing in many countries with the shift toward decentralization. Whereas there is greater reliance on local authorities to handle health matters, not much attention has been paid to ways in which local government leaders might interact with regional health professional school leadership to shape a jurisdiction’s health plans, personnel requirements, and budget process to respond to local needs.

Overall, the examples in this brief illustrate that health professional schools can exercise leadership in a variety of ways and with a variety of stakeholders. To tap into this leadership potential, it is important to raise the awareness of national, regional, local government, community, and other stakeholders about the policy-making resources that schools have to offer, while working with schools to increase their ability and readiness to take an active part in the policy process.