Technical Areas > Health Systems Strengthening

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Innovative actions are being undertaken across Africa to strengthen health systems that are more responsive to improving the health of Africans.  Unfortunately, there are not always opportunities for “taking a step back” to observe and reflect on these HSS innovations and the gains made by the solutions developed.  ASH seeks to address these issues in HSS by analyzing and synthesizing information to generate knowledge and summarizing lessons learned on key HSS issues.  Systematic reflection, synthesizing and distilling of the key elements of those innovations and the lessons learned can help countries adapt the innovation to their own context.  ASH aims to strengthen national health systems in Africa by documenting evidence of best practice in HSS, analyzing emerging innovations particularly in the areas of eHealth, mHealth and performance-based financing, and facilitating increased networking and collaboration between regional African institutions and organizations. 

ASH’s HSS activities include:
  • Developing technical briefs that summarize evidence on cutting edge HSS issues. For example, ASH developed three volumes of an mHealth compendium and a technical brief on the relationship between health, trade and economic growth.
  • Conducting reviews across countries to generate evidence on key issues and promising solutions already implemented in countries to assess the potential for scaling up health system strengthening mechanisms in Africa, such as eHealth, mHealth, and performance-based financing.
  • Mapping key programs, approaches and stakeholders in Africa that contribute to making health systems stronger and more responsive to community needs, including health initiatives supported by and resources provided by non-health focused private corporations, regional economic communities, and regional networks and organizations.
  • Fostering collaboration and contributing to consensus building processes on HSS issues. For example, ASH supported health sessions with decision-makers at the 2012 and 2013 African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) forums and organized a satellite session held at the 2012 Health Systems Research (HSR) meeting in Beijing,
  • Developing and promoting methodologies for improving the leadership, management and governance capacity of health providers and regional institutions.