Joint Learning Network report provides insight in successes to date toward universal health coverage

The Joint Learning Network for Universal Health Coverage (JLN) recently published the Joint Learning Network Update to highlight its unique collaborative model that enables practitioners and policymakers in low and middle income countries to accelerate country progress toward universal health coverage (UHC) by learning from each others’ successes and challenges and collectively producing new knowledge, tools, and innovative approaches that can be used in multiple countries. (Click here to download report)

‘The visits and interaction of JLN really helped Ghana with capitation,’ said Sam Adjei, Executive Director of the Center for Health and Social Services (CHeSS). ‘People would go see what is happening in Thailand and then return home to apply those lessons.’

Every year 100 million people are pushed into poverty because they have to pay out-of-pocket for health care services. Numerous countries are experimenting with models for moving toward UHC to protect against financial risk, increase access to health services, and improve health outcomes. These countries face a multitude of design and implementation challenges due to country-specific adaptations, political challenges, and the complexity of reforms.

Over the past year, we have seen growing global attention for UHC, including a 2012 United Nations resolution and a speech by Jim Kim, President of theWorld Bank during the 2013 World Health Assembly that highlighted the opportunity for UHC to serve as an overarching health goal in the post-2015 dialogues.

With catalytic funding from the Rockefeller Foundation and collaboration from other development partners including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, GIZ, the World Bank and the World Health Organization, JLN members from Ghana, India, Indonesia, Kenya, the Philippines, Malaysia, Mali, Nigeria, and Vietnam, co-produce innovative products and tools in the areas of expanding coverage, information technology, provider payment and quality to accelerate country progress toward UHC.

Leveraging a unique collaborative model for joint problem solving, the JLN facilitates country learning exchanges and virtual dialogue, that allow members to build on real experience and collectively produce and use new knowledge, tools, and innovative approaches to avoid ‘recreating the wheel’ and accelerate country progress.

These useful new knowledge and tools help to expand coverage to the more than three billion people globally, many of them in the poorest half of the world’s population, that lack access to quality, essential health care with financial protection.

The Joint Learning Network Secretariat, based at the Results for Development Institute (R4D), and the Joint Learning Fund, administered by ACCESS Health International are both supported by The Rockefeller Foundation. As requested by country members, technical support for activities to date have been provided by partners including GIZ, the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, the National Center for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE), PATH, PharmAccess Foundation, R4D, the World Bank, and the World Health Organization.

For more information, please contact Nkem Wellington atnwellington@resultsfordevelopment.org.

To download the Joint Learning Network for Universal Health Coverage Report, please visit:
http://bit.ly/14XPuMo

For additional background on the Joint Learning Network visit our websitewww.jointlearningnetwork.org or watch one of our videos:

• What is the Joint Learning Network for Universal Health Coverage?,http://bit.ly/14dvsLE
• How are members of the Information Technology track collaborating to move toward UHC?, http://bit.ly/11TYjpt
• ‘Accreditation as an Engine for Improvement’: The Quality track approach, http://bit.ly/18RG9tK