This unique book is the first to bring together primary care experiences from around the world, with emphasis on non-Western regions. Utilising published articles that profile different countries’ primary health care, accompanied by expert commentaries, the book consolidates global primary health care information over the past decade. Profiling the different countries’ primary health care systems and their implementation of primary health care policy, as promoted by WHO and WONCA, the guide provides evidence of how countries and regions can introduce primary health care and family practice to improve their health care infrastructure and delivery. The book is essential reading for policy makers, health educators and academic leaders in primary care and students of global health and provides useful background for those entering or established in clinical family practice around the world.

In 2015, building on the advances of the Millennium Development Goals, the United Nations adopted Sustainable Development Goals that include an explicit commitment to achieve universal health coverage by 2030. However, enormous gaps remain between what is achievable in human health and where global health stands today, and progress has been both incomplete and unevenly distributed. In order to meet this goal, a deliberate and comprehensive effort is needed to improve the quality of health care services globally. Crossing the Global Quality Chasm: Improving Health Care Worldwide focuses on one particular shortfall in health care affecting global populations: defects in the quality of care. This study reviews the available evidence on the quality of care worldwide and makes recommendations to improve health care quality globally while expanding access to preventive and therapeutic services, with a focus in low-resource areas. Crossing the Global Quality Chasm emphasizes the organization and delivery of safe and effective care at the patient/provider interface. This study explores issues of access to services and commodities, effectiveness, safety, efficiency, and equity. Focusing on front line service delivery that can directly impact health outcomes for individuals and populations, this book will be an essential guide for key stakeholders, governments, donors, health systems, and others involved in health care.

The global health community is broadly in agreement that achievement of the health-related Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) hinges upon both an escalation of the financial resources dedicated to primary health care (PHC) and a more effective use of those resources: more money, better spent. This book introduces and explicates the end-to-end resource tracking and management (RTM) framework, which includes five components that determine effective and efficient financing for PHC: resource mobilization, allocation, utilization, productivity, and targeting.In addition, this book compiles detailed results from the most recent RTM-based resource tracking efforts for PHC in selected countries. This is to demonstrate how the RTM framework can be used to bring a set of separate resource tracking efforts at different stages of flow of funds into a comprehensive process with an end-to-end 'storyline'. In order to build a functional PHC system that addresses access, quality, and equity issues, this book highlights the key (public) financing issues that researchers, technical advisors, and policy makers would need to address in addition to more resources.

This report is the first of its kind to measure health service coverage and financial protection to assess countries' progress towards universal health coverage. It shows that at least 400 million people do not have access to one or more essential health services and 6% of people in low- and middle-income countries are tipped into or pushed further into extreme poverty because of health spending. Universal health coverage (UHC) means that all people receive the quality essential health services they need without being exposed to financial hardship. A significant number of countries at all levels of development are embracing the goal of UHC as the right thing to do for their citizens. It is a powerful social equalizer and contributes to social cohesion and stability. Every country has the potential to improve the performance of its health system in the main dimensions of UHC: coverage of quality services and financial protection for all. Priorities strategies and implementation plans for UHC will differ from one country to another. Enhanced and expanded monitoring of health under the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) should seek to build on that experience sharpening our focus on the key health service and financial protection interventions that underpin UHC. Effective UHC tracking is central to achieving the global goals for poverty alleviation and health improvement set by the World Bank Group and WHO. Without it policymakers and decision-takers cannot say exactly where they are or set a course for where they want to go. They cannot know whether they are focussing their efforts in the right areas or whether their efforts are making a difference. Monitoring is thus fundamental to the achievement of UHC objectives. It will also be vital to the realization of the SDGs. This report is a critical step to show how monitoring progress can be done telling us what the state of coverage of interventions and financial protection is and telling us where to focus most.

Recommendations and report outlining operational aspects, suggested national strategies; nonAboriginal material.

How did seven low- and middle-income countries, inspired by the landmark Alma-Ata Declaration, dramatically improve citizen health by focusing on primary health care? The Alma-Ata Declaration of 1978 marked a potential turning point in global health, signaling a commitment to primary health care that could have improved the safety of air, food, water, roads, homes, and workplaces in all 180 countries that signed it. Unfortunately, progress in many countries stalled in the 1980s. The declaration was, however, embraced by a number of countries, where its implementation led to substantial improvement in citizen health. Achieving Health for All reveals how, inspired by Alma-Ata, the governments of seven countries executed comprehensive primary health care systems, deploying new cadres of community-based health workers to bring relevant services to ordinary households. Drawing on a set of narrative case studies from Bangladesh, Indonesia, Ethiopia, Nepal, Ghana, Sri Lanka, and Vietnam,the book explains how a primary health care focus succeeded in improving population health. The book also conclusively demonstrates that comprehensive, multisector, community-controlled, and population-level primary health care is a viable strategy that, against the odds, has led to sustainable, scalable good health at lower cost. Bringing together a group of experts to analyze the forty-year legacy of the Alma-Ata Declaration, Achieving Health for All is a fascinating look at the work needed to transform nations from places that make people sick to places where they stay healthy. An inspiring array of lessons learned along the way shows how readers can make policies that support the health of all people. Contributors: Onaopemipo Abiodun, Vinya Ariyaratne, John Koku Awoonor-Williams, Kedar Prasad Baral, Ayaga A. Bawah, Pedro Más Bermejo, Fred N. Binka, David Bishai, Carolina Cardona, Dennis Carlson, Chala Tesfaye Chekagn, Hoang Khanh Chi, Svea Closser, Luc Barrière Constantin, Zufan Abera Damtew, Marlou de Rouw, Nadia Diamond-Smith, Philip Forth, Mignote Solomon Haile, Nguyen Thanh Huong, Taufique Joarder, Alice Kuan, Seblewengel Lemma, Sasmira Matta, Ahmed Moen, Rituu B. Nanda, Frank K. Nyonator, Ferdous Arfina Osman, Claudia Pereira, Henry B. Perry, James F. Phillips, Meike Schleiff, Melissa Sherry, Rita Thapa, Kebede Worku

For many citizens primary health care is the first point of contact with their health care system, where most of their health needs are satisfied but also acting as the gate to the rest of the system. In that respect primary care plays a crucial role in how patients value health systems as responsive to their needs and expectations. This volume analyses the way how primary are is organized and delivered across European countries, looking at governance, financing and workforce aspects and the breadth of the service profiles. It describes wide national variations in terms of accessibility, continuity and coordination. Relating these differences to health system outcomes the authors suggest some priority areas for reducing the gap between the ideal and current realities.