New paper on district health management in complex health systems
A new paper on district health management in complex health systems has been published in Frontiers of Public Health journal by the Ghana and Swiss teams of the PERFORM2Scale consortium.
The paper - 'How Does District Health Management Emerge Within a Complex Health System? Insights for Capacity Strengthening in Ghana' - explores how district health management emerges from contextual, organisational, and individual factors.
Anne Christine Stender Heerdegen of the Swiss and Ghana team said: “It is recognised that we need to strengthen district health management if we’re to achieve universal health coverage. However, it’s a complex matter. In this paper we examine that complexity and show that if we are to create sustainable improvements in public health systems, then individual, organisational and contextual aspects have to be taken into consideration.”
The paper concludes that capacity strengthening efforts at district level need to transcend individual competencies, and that systemic approaches are called for in order to strengthen district health management capacity.