Moving towards universal health coverage: Strengthening the evidence ecosystem for the South African health system.

Moving towards universal health coverage: Strengthening the evidence ecosystem for the South African health system. S Afr Med J. 2019 Dec 05;109(11b):8-14 Authors: Mathews C, Goga A, Loveday M, Zembe W, Daviaud E, Siegfried N, Lewin S Abstract Health policy and systems research (HPSR) guides health system reforms and is essential for South Africa (SA)'s progress towards universal coverage of high-quality healthcare. For HPSR evidence to inform and strengthen health systems, it needs to flow efficiently between evidence producers, evidence synthesisers, evidence processers and disseminators and evidence implementors in an evidence ecosystem. A substantial body of evidence for health systems strengthening is generated in SA, and this informs national and international health system guidelines and guidance. In this manuscript, in celebration of the 50th anniversary of the SA Medical Research Council, we apply an evidence ecosystem lens to the SA health system, and discuss its current functioning in support of the achievement of a high-quality health system that is able to achieve universal health coverage. We use three case studies to describe successes, challenges and gaps in the functioning of the evidence ecosystem. The first case study focuses on using evidence to strengthen health-system governance and support for community health worker programmes. The second case focuses on managing the growing epidemic of drug-resistant tubercul...
Source: South African Medical Journal - Category: African Health Tags: S Afr Med J Source Type: research