Publications by authors named "Kira Koch"
Problem: To prioritize key areas of action and investment for the next strategic cycle of national development plans (2026-2031) in Oman, we needed a holistic view of the country's health system and its main deficiencies and inefficiencies.
Approach: Informed by the World Health Organization framework, our team of seven national health ministry staff and two international experts conducted a rapid health system performance assessment. We used already available data to identify system bottlenecks and their potential root causes, verifying our findings with key informant interviews.
Social participation, also termed stakeholder voice, is an important component of health system governance. Increased interactions between the community and policy makers could facilitate a more responsive health system that targets the needs of the community better. Recently, the World Health Organization (WHO) published a handbook on social participation that identified five key themes for ministries of health to consider when engaging the input of the community.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFArticle Synopsis
- - Tunisia's Societal Dialogue for Health process, initiated in 2012, is a participatory governance effort aimed at including citizens in health policy-making, culminating in the National Health Policy 2030.
- - A qualitative study involving interviews with citizens and health experts revealed that this dialogue fostered a "health democracy" by creating inclusive spaces for diverse stakeholders, though it faces challenges like reliance on volunteers, trust issues, and political instability.
- - The experience in Tunisia serves as both a blueprint for successful participatory governance and a cautionary tale about the importance of sustained engagement and addressing systemic challenges to ensure effective health policy implementation.
Health governance challenges can make or break universal health coverage (UHC) reforms. One of the biggest health governance challenges is ensuring meaningful participation and adequately reflecting people's voice in health policies and implementation. Recognizing this, Iran's Health Transformation Plan (HTP) lays out the country's blueprint for UHC with an explicit emphasis on the 'socialization of health.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduction: Health system governance is the cornerstone of performant, equitable and sustainable health systems aiming towards universal health coverage. Global health actors have increasingly been using policy dialogue (PD) as a governance tool to engage with both state and non-state stakeholders. Despite attempts to frame PD practices, it remains a catch-all term for both health systems professionals and researchers.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFRevenue-raising potential for universal health coverage in Benin, Mali, Mozambique and Togo.
Bull World Health Organ
September 2019
Increasing overall fiscal space is important for the health sector due to the centrality of public financing to make progress towards universal health coverage. One strategy is to mobilize additional government revenues through new taxes or increased tax rates on goods and services. We illustrate how countries can assess the feasibility and quantitative potential of different revenue-raising mechanisms.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Protection against financial risk due to medical spending is an explicit health guarantee within Chile's AUGE health reform. This paper seeks to analyze the degree to which out-of-pocket expenditure still expose Chilean households to financial catastrophe and impoverishment, and to explore inequalities in financial protection.
Methods: A systematic literature review was conducted to identify empirical studies analyzing financial protection in Chile.