WASHINGTON, D.C. — Results for Development (R4D), in collaboration with the Strategic Purchasing Africa Resource Center (SPARC), has announced a new toolkit designed to help countries conduct a system-wide assessment of progress toward more strategic health purchasing. The organizations released the toolkit on Oct. 16, 2024.
The Strategic Health Purchasing Progress Tracking Framework toolkit is meant to support policymakers, researchers and other actors working to improve health purchasing in their country to identify opportunities and entry points for building stronger approaches.
Health purchasing refers to how countries or health agencies spend their budgets on health care-related goods and services, and strategic health purchasing is a specific approach in which health funds are purposefully directed toward priority populations, interventions and services with the express goal of encouraging providers to use funds more equitably, cost-effectively and in line with a population’s health needs. The approach is designed to help countries get “more for the money” they spend on health, improve the quality of care and services and make faster progress toward Universal Health Coverage (UHC).
R4D has supported more than 20 countries in strategic health purchasing efforts over a decade. Improvements in strategic health purchasing that R4D has supported include designing benefits packages to prioritize access to primary health care and improving health provider payment systems to create incentives for more responsive service delivery.
This toolkit provides a “how-to” guide for policymakers, researchers and academics who may want to apply the Framework in their countries and includes testimonials and tips from others who have applied the toolkit in Africa and Asia.
“The Strategic Health Purchasing Progress Tracking Framework and toolkit was co-created by SPARC’s technical partners to fill a gap for a practical tool relevant in their own contexts that can generate actionable evidence to improve policy, track actual progress in countries on the movement toward strategic purchasing, and provide a common language for joint learning and building the knowledge base on the “how-to” of strategic health purchasing,” said R4D Managing Director Cheryl Cashin.
The Framework and toolkit can support countries to:
- Take practical steps to improve purchasing incrementally, in a way that can be scaled system-wide and is not limited to marginal innovations or a single purchaser.
- Identify opportunities for improvement at the health system level across different purchasers through changes in national policies, health system institutions and governance.
- Identify opportunities for improvement at the purchasing agency level through changes in provider payments, policies and governance, and operations.
It was co-created by a group of health financing researchers and academics through SPARC and features resources and lessons learned from more than 20 countries in Africa and Asia.
“The framework that informed this toolkit has now been applied in more than 20 countries in Africa and Asia,” Cashin continued. “The application of the framework in Africa was published in a special issue of the Health Systems and Reform journal that included 17 peer-reviewed papers by more than 40 African authors. The evidence didn’t just sit in the publication, however; the technical partners took it and engaged in policy dialogue that led to continued progress in these countries.”
Explore the Strategic Health Purchasing Progress Tracking Framework toolkit here. To learn more about strategic purchasing, visit this helpful Q&A.
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About Results for Development
Results for Development (R4D) is a leading nonprofit global development partner. We collaborate with change agents — government officials, civil society leaders and social innovators — supporting them as they navigate complex change processes to achieve large-scale, equitable outcomes in health, education and nutrition. We work with country leaders to diagnose challenges, co-create, innovate and implement solutions built on evidence and diverse stakeholder input, and engage in learning to adapt, iterate and improve. We also strengthen global, regional and country ecosystems to support country leaders with expertise, evidence, and innovations. R4D helps country leaders solve their immediate challenges today, while also strengthening systems and institutions to address tomorrow’s challenges. And we share what we learn so others around the world can achieve results for development too. www.R4D.org
