Overview Health Financing Human Resources for Health Leadership and Governance for Health
Monitoring health systems strengthening:
Compendium of indicators for projects supporting leadership and governance for health
This module includes the indicators on leadership and governance for health from the compendium of indicators for projects supporting health financing, human resources, and governance developed by the HFG project.
The indicators cover the following areas:
- Policies, capacity, systems
- Transparency and accountability
- Regulation
- Empowered civil society
- Participation of private sector
The World Bank defines governance as “the manner in which power is exercised in the management of a country’s economic and social resources for development.” USAID’s Democracy, Human Rights and Governance Strategy highlights the centrality of participation and accountability to the achievement of human rights and democratic governance. Strong health governance at all levels is necessary to ensure that resources devoted to the health sector ensure adequate access to health care and improved health. When governance is carried out efficiently, effectively, and equitably, responsive and sustainable health services lead to positive health outcomes. Lack of transparency can undermine the effective use of health care funds. Effective advocacy helps to hold governments accountable, ensuring that enough resources are devoted to priority health needs. Information gaps impede health officials’ capacity to identify and respond to demand for improvements in health service delivery. Health data should be widely available to the institutions and organizations overseeing health implementation, civil society organizations and communities, to enable them to track health system performance, progress towards health targets and to inform advocacy and decision-making. The dimensions of good governance include:
- Transparency – increasing public access to health programming, budget information, procurement, and health outcomes;
- Accountability – clarifying delineation of authorities for health programming and expenditures and external pressure for results;
- Oversight – conducting regular reviews of the results of health investments by institutions and independent entities (parliaments, professional associations, oversight institutions);
- Responsiveness – linking health policy and expenditures with public priorities; and
- Integrity/Ethics – promoting ethical management and standards among health professionals.
Projects that aim to strengthen health governance could support the establishment of governance structures, policies, and processes (including those that aim to prevent corruption and mismanagement of resources). Projects can also strengthen transparency and accountability by establishing or improving various mechanisms for consultations; foster public-private sector collaboration; and institutionalize opportunities for key counterpart participation and mechanisms for routinely sharing information on health expenditures, services and results.
Download and easily browse by indicator:Leadership and Governance Indicators Reference Sheets
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