Health systems governance for universal health coverage action plan: department of health systems governance and financing

Overview

This document outlines a plan of action for the work of the Department of Health Systems Governance and Financing (HGF) in the area of health system governance and leadership, focusing particularly on governance for Universal Health Coverage (UHC). To motivate the plan of action, the document first reviews how governance has been defined as a general concept, then how the concept has been applied to health systems. The next section summarizes what others are doing in this field as a way of identifying where HGF’s work could add value to on-going activities in and outside WHO, the topic of the last section.

The goal of helping countries move closer to UHC guides WHO’s work on health systems strengthening, and is one of the key leadership priorities of the Organization for the period 2014-2019. The definition of UHC used here is based on two World Health Assembly Resolutions, which was also used in the World Health Report of 2010 on Health Systems Financing: the Path to Universal Coverage.2 UHC is the aspiration that all people can obtain the health services they need, of good quality, without suffering financial hardship when paying for them. Health services cover promotion, prevention, treatment, rehabilitation and palliative care, all levels of service delivery (from community health workers to tertiary hospitals) and services across the life course. As such, they also address communicable and noncommunicable diseases.