In accordance with the attached SMO, the 5-day Asia Regional Flagship course on Health Systems Strengthening and Sustainable Financing – The challenge of UHC, was successfully delivered to 70 participants. Groups from Cambodia, India, Indonesia, Lao PDR, Myanmar, Nepal, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, Thailand, Timor-Leste and Vietnam were joined by USAID staff, a representative from KfW Development Bank (Germany) and staff from several member institutes of the Asia Network for capacity building in Health Systems Strengthening (ANHSS), WBI’s training partner network in the region. (The participant list and agenda are attached.) The course was opened by Dr Aye Aye Thwin, USAID’s Regional Director for Public Health (who also stayed for much of the course).
The course was funded mostly by USAID, supplemented by funding from the P4H partnership through GIZ, and the World Bank Institute. The course was taught by ANHSS Flagship cluster leader Winnie Yip (Oxford), Marc Roberts and Bill Hsiao (Harvard School of Public Health), and Ravi Rannan-Eliya (IHP). Peter Annear (Nossal Institute), Wayne Irava (National University of Fiji) and I each taught one session. The course was also used as an opportunity for Training of Trainers from the ANHSS Flagship cluster. IHP handled all the logistics and interactions with participants with superb efficiency.
The political situation in Bangkok calmed considerably during the week, and our only signs of it were in the press reports and security updates that we had been assiduously monitoring.,
Mission Outcomes and Deliverables
(a) Course outcome: Participants’ evaluations were strongly positive: all rated the overall usefulness of the course as 4 or 5 on a 5 point scale, and 91-95% also rated as 4 or 5 the extent to which the course improved their understanding of the challenges of moving towards UHC and improving health system performance, provided useful analytic tools, and made them feel more competent to analyze policy options for improving health systems (Figure 1). The average rating across all individual sessions was 4.5 of a possible 5.
Figure 1: End of course overall ratings by participants (response rate 91%)
As often happens at Flagship courses, several countries approached us to ask if national courses could be delivered for them (PNG and Indonesia, and Vietnam wants help to develop national capacity to deliver the course). I arranged for the WB TTL to talk with Mario Villaverde, who, when Undersecretary for Health, was instrumental in arranging for the Philippines to do this. PNG might be best-served through the Pacific Islands course, and the PNG TTL is contacting Xiaohui Hou to discuss options and possibilities. I noted to the official from Indonesia who approached me that courses had been delivered there in the past, and that he discuss their learning needs with the TTL, since they may want training that is more specific than the Flagship offers (eg how to set up and manage a health insurance system).Participant list Agenda
