Perspectives on progress towards UHC – key messages from health financing and UHC-related sessions at the Cape Town Symposium
The health financing / UHC rapporteur team at the Cape Town Symposium
During the Third Global Symposium on Health Systems Research in Cape Town, a number of rapporteurs were set the task of extracting key messages on a range of topics, including health financing and universal health coverage (UHC). The “health financing and UHC” rapporteur team has summarised the key messages from 12 symposium sessions and would like to share the learnings from the sessions with all those who are interested! Please click on the link to view the summary table.
The sessions and presentations varied widely, from those on specific health financing mechanisms to those on broader, abstract issues relating to progress towards UHC. The team tried to identify common themes in the sessions and presentations and then conceptualise those messages so that the learning is not specific to certain types of health financing mechanisms or individual issues.
There were three key characteristics of the messages arising from the health financing and UHC-related sessions at the Cape Town Symposium:
- Identification of links between health financing and other components of health systems – many of the presentations, and the subsequent discussion, considered health financing issues in association with other components of health systems, such as quality service provision, human resources, etc;
- Requirement for inclusivity – Many sessions discussed how ‘inclusivity’ or ‘universality’ of health financing could be achieved in progress towards UHC, e.g. ensuring access to quality care for all, including vulnerable population groups; universal or targeted approaches, etc; and
- Importance of interactions between people/groups of people – Many of the key messages from the sessions related to issues associated with the interaction of the actors or actor groups involved in the process of financing health systems, from policy design to implementation.
We hope the summary is of interest to you. Please feel free to let us know if there is anything that requires clarification or if you have any thoughts on the summary that you would like to share with us.
