The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID),  the Western Pacific Regional Office (WPRO) of the World Health Organization (WHO), the Philippines Department of Health, and other partners will be hosting the Asia Pacific Leadership Forum on Health Information Systems (HIS), which will be held June 13-16 in Manila, Philippines.  Country teams from Bangladesh, Cambodia, Fiji, India, Indonesia, Laos, Mongolia, Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam will participate in the event. 

The primary objective of the forum is to bring multi-ministerial teams together to develop action plans to implement a country-led process to strengthen national Health Information Systems.  The forum builds on ongoing PEPFAR II and Global Health Initiative (GHI) efforts to strengthen national institutions and to accelerate this process through multisectoral advocacy and coordination to improve the policy environment and strengthen national institutions to use quality, timely, accessible health data to improve the delivery of health services.

For more information click here.

The Forum on “Country Ownership Strategies: Leadership Forum On Health Information Systems” seeks to capitalize on vested interest in health information systems (HIS) and country ownership by proposing ways of accelerating the development and implementation of country-owned strategies for strengthening HIS. Previous forums in Africa were sponsored by USAID, in collaboration with DFID, NORAD, ITU, HMN, WHO, the World Bank, and other key agencies and implementing partners; we anticipate that several of these organizations will also sponsor the Asia forum and be joined by new sponsors. The aim of the forum will be to strengthen and accelerate country-owned and country-led strategies for managing HIS in approximately 10 Asian countries. The forum will serve as a venue for sharing approaches on developing a country-led strategy (with “buy-in” from four key government sectors: Health, ICT, Finance, and Vital Stats/Data) to strengthen the national HIS and linking country delegations with potential sources of technical and financial resources to support this effort.

For more information, please read the HIS Leadership Forum Announcements and Report from the Forum in Addis Ababa and Windhoek. Links to these documents are on the right.

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"Metaphors" picture from the webinar presentation by Elizabeth Carger, Senior Project Manager, Olson Zaltman Associates

How to create more compelling, effective and persuasive messages that resonate when talking about the social determinants of health?   

The lessons presented in this Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) publication are most relevant to communicating data from Health Information Systems.  

Quote from the publication “As communicators, we can’t do our work without making use of the facts that are the foundation of our work. They establish the prevalence of an issue; communicate its effect in both economic and human terms; and communicate responsibly about the effectiveness of an approach or intervention.”  

Over the course of four years, the RWJF Vulnerable Populations Portfolio undertook an iterative research and message development process that benefited from both traditional and nontraditional research techniques. This work has helped us communicate more effectively, and we believe in sharing this information with others. In A New Way to Talk About the Social Determinants of Health, the Portfolio shares a way to create more compelling, effective and persuasive messages that resonate across the political spectrum. We hope that this research and the way we have applied it is helpful to broader audiences.Focusing on the messages in how we talk about the science of change is itself a determinant on we arrive at effective solutions.  

Download the paper here: http://www.rwjf.org/files/research/vpmessageguide20100729.pdf  

Watch the webinar on this topic here

Using Mobiles to Improve Children's Health (UN Foundation, 2009)

Effective country ownership requires the participation of all sectors and stakeholders; thus, cross-sector collaborations are essential to success. Encouraging the participation of civil society and the private sector in the development process and decisionmaking is critically important to the achievement of “true” ownership. Country ownership of efforts to strengthen health systems, including national HIS, requires institutionalized processes as well as strong, well-informed champions to ensure that adequate funding is incorporated in the development strategies of governments, international organizations and donors.   

Resources:   

Virtual Center for Leadership and Management (VCLM) website. 

The Virtual Leadership Development Program (VLDP) is a learning program that extends leadership development opportunities into the workplace for health managers and their teams, …   

Building Host-Country Ownership of Development Initiatives (in the context of organizational development)   

Country example:   

WHO COUNTRY COOPERATION STRATEGY, MOZAMBIQUE   

Implementing a sector wide approach in health: the case of Mozambique

Dr Samuel Smith, (Sierra Leone) the Western District Medical Officer uses the electronic data in the DHIS to evaluate and analyze the health situation in his district. During monthly meetings, the findings and trends are discussed with the district. HMN (2010)

The Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness of 2005 states that country ownership will be achieved when “partner countries exercise effective leadership over their development policies and strategies.” Country ownership of development processes and results is critical for achieving sustainable impact including improved health outcomes.

Country-owned and managed HIS have numerous advantages. First and foremost, they are more likely to be sustainable, because countries design the systems with their needs and means in mind. Moreover, country-owned and managed HIS are more likely to result in more effective HIS by reducing fragmentation – and inefficiencies – thought a more integrated design with health data information exchange and interoperability. Better coordinated and less fragmented HIS, in turn, reduce the risk errors and duplication. A more effective HIS means that health information becomes more accurate, timely and relevant and that the system better meets the health information needs of various stakeholders in government, the private sectors and civil society. Well-functioning HIS provide a foundation for accountability, transparency, and evidence-based decisionmaking in the health sector – qualities that not only improve health systems performance but also help to broaden the economic and social impact of development aid overall.

The importance of country ownership and leadership of efforts to strengthen health systems in general and HIS in particular has been expressed at recent events such as the ‘Global Health Information Forum’ and in recent publications such as the ‘Call for Action on Health Data from Eight Global Health Agencies’.

The Call to Action mentions different facets of “country ownership”:

• Increasing Data Access and Use: “We also call for regular well-planned evaluation of major initiatives in a way that balances independence and scientific rigor with country ownership and alignment with country processes.”
• Strengthening Performance Monitoring and Evaluation: “We also call for regular well-planned evaluation of major initiatives in a way that balances independence and scientific rigor with country ownership and alignment with country processes.”

The complete article can be accesses for free at http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pmed.1000223#top

The full text of the Call to Action can be found here: http://www.pmaconference.org//index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=201&Itemid=148.
Country ownership and especially country leadership of national HIS were emphasized in several sessions during the Forum. The following quotes are from the Conference Synthesis Session –Summary, Conclusion and Policy Recommendations.

• Session 1.1 Renewing policy and legislation for health information
  “Leadership in-country – a champion or set of champions is a key ingredient for getting efforts off the ground (1) Coordination body for HIS that includes private sector (2) Addressing stewardship of private sector data for health”
• Session 1.4 Generating global evidence: births, deaths and causes of death
  “High level leadership and country ownership” and “A ‘whole of government’ approach involving all sectors”
• Session 2.1 Tracking country health systems performance
  “Research and methodology for data improvement is needed and leadership is a key success factor”
• Session 2.2 Human Resources Capacity for Health Information
  “Experiences inform need for expertise in health informatics at all levels: national and implementation levels. Informatics professionalism and leadership are essential for success”

The full text of these recommendations can be found at http://www.pmaconference.org/index.php?option=com_docman&task=doc_download&gid=266&Itemid=

“This article addresses the issue of scaling of information systems (IS) in both theoretical and empirical terms. Scaling is an important issue in IS, especially in the contemporary context of globalization, as attempts are ongoing to expand IS in the same context as well as take it into other contexts. Theoretically, an information-infrastructure (II) perspective is drawn on to analyze the challenge of scaling, viewing it not merely as a technical problem, but as a socio-technical one involving a heterogeneous network constituted of technology, people, processes, and the institutional context. Empirically, scaling is analyzed based on experiences from an ongoing project to implement health information systems within the primary health care sector in India. The theoretically informed empirical analysis leads to some preliminary insights relating to the questions of what is being scaled and how it is being scaled. Some conclusions are drawn on theoretical and practical challenges related to scaling, and on implications for human-resource capacity development. ”

 The complete article is available at http://www.globalhivevaluation.org/media/globalaids/pdf/Article%202d%20-%20Sahay%20-%20Scaling%20of%20health%20information%20systems%20in%20India.pdf. It was authored by Sundeep Sahay and Geoff Walsham.

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This USAID document can be viewed at http://www.usaid.gov/our_work/global_health/hs/publications/impact_hss.pdf. It was authored by Soumya Alva, Eckhard Kleinau, amanda Pomeroy and Kathy Rowan.