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      Developing more participatory and accountable institutions for health: identifying health system research priorities for the Sustainable Development Goal-era

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          Abstract

          Health policy and systems research (HPSR) is vital to guiding global institutions, funders, policymakers, activists and implementers in developing and enacting strategies to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals. We undertook a multi-stage participatory process to identify priority research questions relevant to improving accountability within health systems. We conducted interviews ( n = 54) and focus group discussions ( n = 2) with policymakers from international and national bodies (ministries of health, other government agencies and technical support institutions) across the WHO regions. Respondents were asked to reflect on challenges and current policy discussions related to health systems accountability, and to identify their pressing research needs. We also conducted an overview of reviews ( n = 34) to determine the current status of knowledge on health systems accountability and to identify any gaps. We extracted research questions from the policymaker interviews and focus groups (70 questions) and from the overview of reviews (112 questions), and synthesized these into 36 overarching questions. Using the online platform Co-Digital, we invited researchers from around the world to refine and then rank the questions according to research importance. The questions that emerged amongst the top priorities focused on political factors that mediate the adoption or effectiveness of accountability initiatives, processes and incentives that facilitate the acceptability of accountability mechanisms among frontline healthcare providers, and the national governance reforms and contexts that enhance provider accountability. The process revealed different underlying conceptions of social accountability and how best to promote it, with some researchers and policymakers focusing on specific interventions and others embracing a more systems-oriented approach to understanding accountability, the multiple forms that it can take, how these interact with each other and the importance of power and underlying social relations. The findings from this exercise identify HPSR funding priorities and future areas for evidence production and policy engagement.

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          Most cited references29

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          The architecture and effect of participation: a systematic review of community participation for communicable disease control and elimination. Implications for malaria elimination

          Background Community engagement and participation has played a critical role in successful disease control and elimination campaigns in many countries. Despite this, its benefits for malaria control and elimination are yet to be fully realized. This may be due to a limited understanding of the influences on participation in developing countries as well as inadequate investment in infrastructure and resources to support sustainable community participation. This paper reports the findings of an atypical systematic review of 60 years of literature in order to arrive at a more comprehensive awareness of the constructs of participation for communicable disease control and elimination and provide guidance for the current malaria elimination campaign. Methods Evidence derived from quantitative research was considered both independently and collectively with qualitative research papers and case reports. All papers included in the review were systematically coded using a pre-determined qualitative coding matrix that identified influences on community participation at the individual, household, community and government/civil society levels. Colour coding was also carried out to reflect the key primary health care period in which community participation programmes originated. These processes allowed exhaustive content analysis and synthesis of data in an attempt to realize conceptual development beyond that able to be achieved by individual empirical studies or case reports. Results Of the 60 papers meeting the selection criteria, only four studies attempted to determine the effect of community participation on disease transmission. Due to inherent differences in their design, interventions and outcome measures, results could not be compared. However, these studies showed statistically significant reductions in disease incidence or prevalence using various forms of community participation. The use of locally selected volunteers provided with adequate training, supervision and resources are common and important elements of the success of the interventions in these studies. In addition, qualitative synthesis of all 60 papers elucidates the complex architecture of community participation for communicable disease control and elimination which is presented herein. Conclusions The current global malaria elimination campaign calls for a health systems strengthening approach to provide an enabling environment for programmes in developing countries. In order to realize the benefits of this approach it is vital to provide adequate investment in the 'people' component of health systems and understand the multi-level factors that influence their participation. The challenges of strengthening this component of health systems are discussed, as is the importance of ensuring that current global malaria elimination efforts do not derail renewed momentum towards the comprehensive primary health care approach. It is recommended that the application of the results of this systematic review be considered for other diseases of poverty in order to harmonize efforts at building 'competent communities' for communicable disease control and optimising health system effectiveness.
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            Review of corruption in the health sector: theory, methods and interventions.

            Taryn Vian (2008)
            There is increasing interest among health policymakers, planners and donors in how corruption affects health care access and outcomes, and what can be done to combat corruption in the health sector. Efforts to explain the risk of abuse of entrusted power for private gain have examined the links between corruption and various aspects of management, financing and governance. Behavioural scientists and anthropologists also point to individual and social characteristics which influence the behaviour of government agents and clients. This article presents a comprehensive framework and a set of methodologies for describing and measuring how opportunities, pressures and rationalizations influence corruption in the health sector. The article discusses implications for intervention, and presents examples of how theory has been applied in research and practice. Challenges of tailoring anti-corruption strategies to particular contexts, and future directions for research, are addressed.
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              Resources, attitudes and culture: an understanding of the factors that influence the functioning of accountability mechanisms in primary health care settings

              Background District level health system governance is recognised as an important but challenging element of health system development in low and middle-income countries. Accountability is a more recent focus in health system debates. Accountability mechanisms are governance tools that seek to regulate answerability between the health system and the community (external accountability) and/or between different levels of the health system (bureaucratic accountability). External accountability has attracted significant attention in recent years, but bureaucratic accountability mechanisms, and the interactions between the two forms of accountability, have been relatively neglected. This is an important gap given that webs of accountability relationships exist within every health system. There is a need to strike a balance between achieving accountability upwards within the health system (for example through information reporting arrangements) while at the same time allowing for the local level innovation that could improve quality of care and patient responsiveness. Methods Using a descriptive literature review, this paper examines the factors that influence the functioning of accountability mechanisms and relationships within the district health system, and draws out the implications for responsiveness to patients and communities. We also seek to understand the practices that might strengthen accountability in ways that improve responsiveness – of the health system to citizens’ needs and rights, and of providers to patients. Results The review highlights the ways in which bureaucratic accountability mechanisms often constrain the functioning of external accountability mechanisms. For example, meeting the expectations of relatively powerful managers further up the system may crowd out efforts to respond to citizens and patients. Organisational cultures characterized by supervision and management systems focused on compliance to centrally defined outputs and targets can constrain front line managers and providers from responding to patient and population priorities. Conclusion Findings suggest that it is important to limit the potential negative impacts on responsiveness of new bureaucratic accountability mechanisms, and identify how these or other interventions might leverage the shifts in organizational culture necessary to encourage innovation and patient-centered care.
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                Author and article information

                Journal
                Health Policy Plan
                Health Policy Plan
                heapol
                Health Policy and Planning
                Oxford University Press
                0268-1080
                1460-2237
                November 2018
                20 September 2018
                20 September 2018
                : 33
                : 9
                : 975-987
                Affiliations
                [1 ]Health Systems Program, Department of International Health, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, 615 N. Wolf Street, Baltimore, MA, USA
                [2 ]Department of Health Behavior and Society, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, 615 N. Wolf Street, Baltimore, MA, USA
                Author notes
                Corresponding author. Health Systems Program, Department of International Health, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, 615 N. Wolf Street, Baltimore 21205, MD, USA. E-mail: kscott26@ 123456jhu.edu
                Author information
                http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3597-9637
                Article
                czy079
                10.1093/heapol/czy079
                6263024
                30247610
                262dc898-40be-4141-bb4e-5462b1eb7cae
                © The Author(s) 2018. Published by Oxford University Press in association with The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

                This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

                History
                : 13 August 2018
                Page count
                Pages: 13
                Funding
                Funded by: Alliance for Health Policy and Systems Research 10.13039/100007855
                Funded by: World Health Organization 10.13039/100004423
                Award ID: 201599598
                Categories
                Original Articles
                Editor's Choice

                Social policy & Welfare
                health policy and systems research,research priorities,evidence-based policy,evidence-to-action,sustainable development goals,social accountability,governance

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