Social Health Protection: Addressing inequities in access to healthcare

The course provided an overview of the objectives of social health protection and its contribution to reaching universal health coverage (UHC) and universal social protection (USP) in the context of the 2030 Agenda. It examined the state of coverage and macro-trends at global and country levels, before exploring the guiding principles provided by ILO standards for the design and operationalization of social health protection schemes. The course focused on the extension of the various dimensions of coverage and will provide insights on the technical options for coverage expansion. OBJECTIVES Through this training participants: - Understand the role of social health protection in the context of national social protection systems, including floors. - Be conversant with global and regional deficits in health coverage and access as well as inequities across and within countries. - Identify the main design parameters and technical options to make the right to social health protection a reality for all. - Be better equipped when participating in the process of formulating and implementing policies aiming at reaching universal health coverage. CONTENT - Global frameworks and strategies: to help contextualise national social health protection strategies and programmes. - Coverage extension and pooling: understand different approaches and technical options for extending coverage – especially to informal workers – and broadening risk pooling. - Revenue collection: explore, analyse and compare different models for revenue collection with practical examples and case studies. - Benefit packages: understand the formulation process – selecting a range of health interventions and cost coverage. - Purchasing: learn about different approaches to purchasing health services in the context of social health protection schemes. - Sustainable financing: to inform medium and longer term financing strategies for social health protection in the context of public financial management and social budgeting - Governance and administration: understand the importance of robust governance, management and administration of social health protection programmes to leverage the resources and structures offered by broader social protection and health systems. - Monitoring and evaluating the implementation of social health protection schemes. - Actuarial work in health: an introduction to the importance of actuarial work in health. - An overview of maternity and sickness cash benefits. NUMBER OF HOURS: This blended training on Social Security consisted of 60 learning hours of online and face to face tuition over a period of 3 weeks.