Harmonised approaches to health systems strengthening

Countries and the global health community broadly agree that the cornerstone of achieving universal health coverage is to develop and strengthen all aspects of countries’ health systems.

A main purpose of UHC2030 therefore is to help improve coordination to ensure the most effective approach to health system strengthening.

UHC2030 encourages partners and related initiatives to coordinate their efforts on health systems strengthening, and provides concrete tools and approaches to help improve such coordination. This particularly applies in low- and middle-income countries with weaker health systems, where multiple partners provide development cooperation to support health systems strengthening (HSS).

Health systems for universal health coverage: a joint vision for healthy lives

Read about our joint vision for health systems strengthening here. This publication is a key reference document for UHC2030 and a broader resource for the global community to inform collaboration on the health systems strengthening (HSS) and universal health coverage (UHC) agenda. The vision outlines performance and policy entry points to promote UHC through HSS, including critical action for the way forward and principles to guide action.

In relation to HSS, UHC2030 works to:

Improve coordination of HSS efforts at global level, including synergies with related related initiatives
Strengthen multi-stakeholder policy dialogue and coordination of health systems strengthening efforts in countries, including adherence to principles of effective development cooperation in countries receiving external assistance.
Continue to prioritise impact at country level through developing tools and approaches that can improve coordination, including facilitating coordinated technical assistance.
Other areas of UHC2030 work such as knowledge exchange and learning, and some of the Technical Working Groups also contribute to facilitating better coordination of health systems strengthening

Photo by Fanjan Combrink (WHO).

Effective development cooperation

For countries that receive external donor assistance to develop health systems, adhering to effective development cooperation principles is still the most important way to ensure coordination around health systems strengthening.

UHC2030 draws on lessons from the IHP+ experience, about what has worked well and what has not, including how to better promote the principles of effective development cooperation, like the Seven Behaviours. These principles are anchored in country ownership and guide the actions of all partners towards more effective and aligned efforts towards HSS and thereby UHC.

UHC2030 continues to pay particular attention to country contexts where the alignment and coordination of global partners around country leadership and systems is critical but not a given, particularly in post-conflict and fragile contexts.

Tools and approaches to improve coordination of HSS

UHC2030 continues to update existing tools, such as the Joint Assessment of National Health Strategies and Joint Annual Reviews below. We also consider the development of new tools to assist countries to translate the principles of strengthening health systems for UHC into practice.

Here are the tools associated with coordination of health systems strengthening efforts.