Health policy and systems research: Strengthening community-based health systems

Team members

*indicates student or postdoctoral fellow

Nelisiwe Maleka*
Ms Nikki Schaay

This three-year project sought to enhance research capacity and competence for designing and conducting health policy and systems research with a focus on community-based health systems (CHS)

Project period

01 January 2017 – 31 October 2020

Project Summary

Completed in 2020, this three-year project sought to enhance research capacity and competence for designing and conducting health policy and systems research with a focus on community-based health systems (CHS). It also sought to understand how, for whom and under what circumstances, innovations in community-based delivery achieve gains in access to healthcare and strengthens health systems.

Undertaken with Umeå University (Sweden) the Umeå-UWC collaboration (known as the ‘U2U collaboration’) enabled the School to leverage a wider (South-South-North) network and set of collaborative arrangements on CHS. This network includes the universities of Cape Town and of Zambia, Muhimbili University (Tanzania), Makerere University (Uganda), and the Centre for Health Equity and Governance in Health Systems (Guatemala).

The project culminated in a two-workshop series in Lusaka, Zambia, the first of which (in June 2019) was attended by 33 participants from seven institutions in the U2U wider network as well as frontline workers, managers and senior policy makers from the Zambian Ministry of Health. The workshop explored the multiple lenses on CHS, and developed research priorities which were captured in the Chaminuka workshop report. In a follow-up writing workshop held in March 2020, a smaller group of participants planned a special issue of the International Journal on Health Policy and Management on CHS –co-edited by UWC, Umeå and University of Zambia. The first article of the specific issue The Multiple Lenses on the Community Health System: Implications for Policy, Practice and Research has been published.

In late 2020, the Swedish Research Council awarded the network (now referred to as CHS Connect) a further three years funding (2020-2022) to consolidate and advance its activities.