Since the early 21st century, international development stakeholders have committed to improve the quality and effectiveness of aid and its impact on countries’ development, as reflected in the Paris Declaration in 2005 and further strengthened with the Accra Agenda for Action in 2008. The Accra Agenda for Action took stock of progress since the Paris Declaration and proposed the following main areas for improvement: Ownership; Inclusive partnerships; Delivering results; and Capacity development.
For the health sector, the International Health Partnership (IHP+) was launched in 2007, with the aim of better coordinating donor aid, widening the focus of aid to include health systems, and an increased focus on support to national health plans and systems.
The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development incorporates 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to guide global action for peace and prosperity. SDG 3, Good Health and Well-Being, aims to “ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages”. Sub-target 3.8 focuses on the achievement of universal health coverage (UHC). This requires strengthening health systems, of which health information systems (HIS) are a key component. Robust HIS are critical to monitoring health service delivery, improving health-care coverage in an equitable and inclusive manner, and supporting countries’ progress towards SDG 3.
With the broadening of the global health agenda to include health systems, IHP+ also broadened its scope to include health systems strengthening as necessary for achieving UHC. The Health Data Collaborative (HDC) was established in 2016 as a UHC2030 initiative to strengthen national and subnational systems for integrated monitoring of health programmes and their performance.
The HDC aims to contribute to the goal of data-driven performance and accountability through supporting the collection, analysis and use of timely and accurate data. Its strategies for doing this are to enhance country statistical capacity and stewardship, and strengthen the alignment of partners’ technical and financial commitments for nationally owned HIS and a common monitoring and evaluation (M&E) plan. A stronger HIS means more timely, accurate and comparable data that can be more reliably used to design and monitor effective health interventions and policies, thus contributing to the goal of data-driven performance and accountability.
The HDC’s Theory of Change aims to align partners’ technical and financial investments with country-driven plans in order to improve efficiency and alignment of investments in health data systems, as well as to strengthen country capacity to plan, implement, monitor and review progress and processes for data collection, availability, analysis and use.
In line with the HDC’s alignment agenda, five country case studies were conducted in 2021–2022 to assess the status of the HIS in the selected countries, the investments that national governments and partners are making to strengthen HIS, and the status of alignment of these investments to national priorities for strengthening HIS. The five countries selected for this work were Cameroon, Kenya and Zambia in sub-Saharan Africa, and Bangladesh and Nepal in South Asia.
Source: UN Children’s Fund