Resource Type: Brief
Authors: Derick Brinkerhoff and Thomas Bossert
Published: 2/29/2008

Resource Description:

USAID’s Global Health Bureau, through a series of field assistance and applied analysis programs, has helped countries address a range of governance-related issues within the framework of health systems strengthening. However, only recently has health governance become an explicit component of the Bureau’s health systems agenda. To assist the Bureau and Missions to understand health governance and to develop intervention options that incorporate it into programs, this paper provides an overview with the following aims:

• Clarify the meaning of health governance.
• Identify health governance issues and challenges.
• Develop a model for health governance that highlights its practical dimensions.
• Review selected experience with interventions to improve health governance.
• Propose options for health governance programming that can strengthen health systems and ultimately lead to increased use of priority services.