News

The Health Systems 20/20 Presentation Series takes place monthly at the Ronald Reagan Building, Washington, DC. The next session, to take place March 23, features Dr. Tran Thi Mai Oanh, Dr. Duong Huy Luong, and Dr. Khuong Anh Tuan of the Vietnam Ministry of Health speaking about "Measuring Health Systems Performance in Vietnam: Results from Eight Provincial Health Systems Assessments." Read more about the schedule and download past presentations after the jump.

In three sites in Mindanao, Philippines, Health Systems 20/20 is supporting the establishment of facility-based governance committees that focus on improving the quality of health services.

In December 2009 project staff were in Haiti working on estimating program costs for HIV/AIDS prevention, care, and treatment services.

Catherine Connor debunks misconceptions about health systems in her blog post, "Health Systems Strengthening: True or False?" Read the blog and post a comment at http://www.globalhealthmagazine.com/guest_blog/

Health Systems 20/20 (known in Yemen as the Yemen Partners for Health Reform YPHR Project) recently disseminated the results of the 2006 Amran Governorate Health Accounts (GHA) work at a conference held in Amran. Various representatives from the governorate and district authorities, including district health directors and the Amran General Director of Health, attended the conference.

Click here to watch a short broadcast clip of the Amran GHA conference.

In recognition of work Health Systems 20/20 and predecessor project, Partners for Health Reformplus/Yemen PHR (YPHR) have carried out in Amran, Yemen, since 2004, the Amran governorate and health office awarded the project a certificate of appreciation on November 16, 2009. Both USAID and YPHR were applauded for their on-going efforts to strengthen Amran's health system.

Health Systems 20/20 was highlighted as a leader in the measurement of governance and anti-corruption progress by Boston University's Taryn Vian in an interview in GTZ's Public Finance Reform December '09 Newsletter.

Two innovations from the Health Systems 20/20 project for measuring progress in health systems strengthening are cited in USAID's first Health Systems Report to Congress. More...

Our dear colleague and cherished friend Gilbert Kombe passed away November 6, 2009, at Sibley Hospital in Washington, D.C. Gilbert is survived by his wife, Karin Theophile Kombe, a son, Adrian Kafita, and daughter, Emily Porter, of Takoma Park, Maryland.

The Egyptian Ministry of Health (MOH) is working to strengthen its capacity to roll out and sustain health sector reforms. Challenges faced include excess workforce capacity in some facilities, imbalances in the geographic and specialty distributions of health workers, and sub-optimal quality of the graduating workforce.

The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has recently engaged in a 30-year retrospective of Egypt's achievements in population, health and nutrition, including an assessment USAID's role in those accomplishments. As part of this process, an evaluation team met with representatives of the agency's Health Systems 20/20 project based in Cairo. Project staff accompanied the evaluators on a visit to Gharbia Governorate in late October 2009 to showcase the project’s recent achievements in the area of workforce planning.

Upgrades to the Health Systems Database include the addition of health system indicators, data from other sources (such as the Demographic and Health Surveys, [DHS]), enhanced data downloading and charting features, display of data on a Google map, and more comprehensive country fact sheets.

Over the past two decades the emergence of several large disease-specific global initiatives (GHI) has shifted the way development assistance in public health is provided. To help assess the interaction between GHIs and country health systems, Health Systems 20/20 staff Susna De, Wenjuan Wang, Jenna Wright, and Takondwa Mwase participated in the WHO Maximizing Positive Synergies Collaborative Group. Their multiple-country analysis on financing HIV/AIDS work contributed to the Group’s report, the highlights of which appear in a recent Lancet article.

Kenya, like many other countries in sub-Saharan Africa, has been affected by shortages of health workers in the public sector. Data on the rates and leading reasons for health worker attrition in the public sector are key in developing effective, evidence-based planning and policy on human resources for health. Health Systems 20/20 and Abt staff members Slavea Chankova, Stephen Muchiri, and Gilbert Kombe co-authored an article entitled “Health workforce attrition in the public sector in Kenya: a look at the reasons” recently published in Human Resources for Health.

Kenya, like many other countries in sub-Saharan Africa, has been affected by shortages of health workers in the public sector. Data on the rates and leading reasons for health worker attrition in the public sector are key in developing effective, evidence-based planning and policy on human resources for health. Health Systems 20/20 staff members Slavea Chankova, Stephen Muchiri, and Gilbert Kombe co-authored an article entitled “Health workforce attrition in the public sector in Kenya: a look at the reasons” recently published in Human Resources for Health.