Article Text
Abstract
The journey to universal health coverage (UHC) is full of challenges, which to a great extent are specific to each country. ‘Learning for UHC’ is a central component of countries’ health system strengthening agendas. Our group has been engaged for a decade in facilitating collective learning for UHC through a range of modalities at global, regional and national levels. We present some of our experience and draw lessons for countries and international actors interested in strengthening national systemic learning capacities for UHC. The main lesson is that with appropriate collective intelligence processes, digital tools and facilitation capacities, countries and international agencies can mobilise the many actors with knowledge relevant to the design, implementation and evaluation of UHC policies. However, really building learning health systems will take more time and commitment. Each country will have to invest substantively in developing its specific learning systemic capacities, with an active programme of work addressing supportive leadership, organisational culture and knowledge management processes.
- health systems
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Footnotes
Handling editor Seye Abimbola
Twitter @jarthurk, @jdossou80, @isieleunou
Contributors All the authors have actively contributed to at least one of the knowledge management activities reported in this practice paper. BM authored the first version of the paper summarising the collective experience. Other co-authors contributed with comments. Editing was finalised by GvH and AGK.
Funding The authors have not declared a specific grant for this research from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.
Competing interests BM holds minority shares in Blue Square, a firm developing software solutions for health systems, including for PBF programmes. Other authors have no conflict of interest.
Patient consent for publication Not required.
Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.
Data availability statement There are no data in this work.
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