HIGHLIGHTS
- Brazil’s public health care system faces challenges from chronic and communicable diseases and fiscal constraints.
- Abt is supporting a locally led, targeted approach to strengthening human resources, information systems, finance, and technologies.
- Results are expected from 2020 through 2022.
The Challenge
The Prosperity Fund (PF) is a UK cross-government fund that addresses barriers that prevent middle-income countries from achieving inclusive and sustainable economic growth. The PF recognises that the development of—and universal access to—a robust healthcare system is crucial to reducing poverty and achieving inclusive development. The ‘Better Health’ Programme (BHP) is a PF global programme operating in eight countries to achieve two primary objectives:
- Reduce ill health and premature death due to chronic, non-communicable diseases and
- Reduce morbidity and early mortality from sub-optimal quality in healthcare.
The Approach
As part of a winning consortium, Abt Global implements the PF Better Health Programme in Brazil, which is one of a larger portfolio of eight target countries. Abt is responsible for implementing the programme’s monitoring, reporting, evaluation, and learning (MREL) activities. This includes measuring progress against programme indicators at a programme and portfolio level; providing evidence to assess how the programme evolves over time; and identifying issues related to effectiveness and efficiency of implementation of activities. Through MREL, we’ll apply the knowledge gained from evidence and analysis to improve program outcomes.
The Results
The programme is currently in its inception phase and is due for completion in 2022. Goals include:
- Strengthened, aligned, and reformed primary care training for graduates—and thus building capacity--across the country.
- Improved national payments and reimbursement systems in primary care.
- Strengthened evidence-based performance monitoring/quality improvement system across primary care and improved national dataset usage (coordination, architecture, governance, and quality including the adoption of the SNOMED CT healthcare technology) to influence policy and practice.
- Enhanced federal and state capacity to conduct health technology assessments by training personnel.