On Wednesday, January 20, USAID’s Office of Health Systems (GH/OHS) and the Health Finance & Governance (HFG) Project hosted a technical briefing session to explore essential packages of health services (EPHS) in the 24 USAID Ending Preventable Child and Maternal Deaths (EPCMD) priority countries. An EPHS is a public policy tool for governing the health sector; it comprises those health care services that the government is providing or is aspiring to provide to its citizens in an equitable manner.

Jodi Charles (USAID/GH/OHS), Jeremy Kanthor (HFG), and Jenna Wright (HFG) presented HFG’s recently completed analysis  of the 24 EPCMD countries’ EPHS and government strategies for guaranteeing those health services. The technical briefing presented the cross-cutting themes identified through the analysis and included a discussion about how EPHS contributes to better governance of the health sector.

The briefing, which was held at USAID and made available via webinar, drew a large audience of more than 75 participants, including USAID staff, implementing partners, and ministry of health staff from partner countries.

“This is a tremendously rich data set because it helps us to see the gaps, and it will help us to target our efforts toward those gaps,” said Karen Cavanaugh, Director of USAID’s Office of Health Systems, during the question and answer session.

The presentation and country snapshots are available on the HFG website.