WHO has developed an Urban health capacities assessment and response resource kit that equips multi-sectoral teams to assess whether a given initiative can meet its goals in a complex urban environment. It helps answer a critical question: Do we have the right capacities in place to achieve our objectives that influence urban health —whether directly or indirectly? The Kit provides a structured framework through its Primer, and a step-by-step process in the Action Guide and Training Videos, helping you evaluate key capacities across four critical areas: Informed decision-making, monitoring, and evaluation; Policies, programmes, innovation, and change; Resource management (human, financial, and infrastructural) and Partnerships, participation, and knowledge sharing. There are also real-world examples in the City-examples section.
Useful Resources
This site has been designed as a self-learning tool for grassroots activists, advocacy organisations, and policy makers looking to centre health justice in their work. Work is organised into a unique narrative arch used to help people learn specific health injustice topics. This Urban Health Council’s role is to summon together people under an autonomous method of governance and practice whereby peer-led programmes determine the direction of production of works that support health justice movements, led by the People for the People, meeting them where they are with what they need. Each programme is supported through a scientific, technical and financial ecosystem where all works produced are made open-access in a Living Encyclopedia.
This resource provides updated information on Mpox, on its mode of spread, who it infects, how it is treated, and vaccine options and vaccine inequality related to Mpox. It also provides information on how to prevent the spread of mpox.
Routine health facility data helps decision-makers better understand facilities’ service readiness, utilization, and quality, enabling evidence-based policy and resource decisions. MOMENTUM’s “Strengthening Analysis and Use of Routine Facility Data for Maternal, Newborn, Child and Adolescent Health” webinar series is a “training of trainers” for monitoring, evaluation, and learning professionals. The series covers WHO’s Analysis and Use of Health Facility Data: Guidance for Maternal, Newborn, Child, and Adolescent Health (MNCAH) Program Managers toolkit, which introduces a catalog of indicators for MNCAH that can be monitored through routine health facility data and offers guidance on data quality, analysis, and use. The series will feature real-world examples of how to improve analysis and use of routine health facility data. French interpretation will be available at all sessions.
The Health Emergency Preparedness Response and Resilience (HEPRR) programme for Eastern and Southern Africa was officially launched in May 2024. Through the ECSA-HC in collaboration with the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), the programme aims to fortify the region’s health systems to ensure robust preparedness and effective responses to health emergencies, including from climate change. The programme adopts a Multi-Phase Programmatic Approach (MPA), starting with Kenya, Ethiopia, and Sao Tome and Principe, with subsequent phases incorporating additional countries. This phased approach allows for flexibility and adaptability, leveraging insights from earlier phases to enhance the programme’s impact.
This televised discussion about the debt crisis in Kenya comprises a conversation with Kwame Owino of The Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA Kenya), Professor Attiya Waris, the UN Independent Expert on Foreign Debt and Human Rights and Jason Braganza, Executive Director of the Africa Forum on Debt and Development. The discussion touches on budget deficit, whether or not to mobilize domestic revenue or borrow, the operation of the Kenyan Debt Management Office, and structure and transformation of the Kenyan economy. The speakers critique the deference of the global economy to creditors over debtors, and call for debt reorganisation.
This brief reports on the issues raised in the third webinar in the EQUINET series on climate justice and health, with this webinar on health systems and climate. It was convened by the Research for Equity and Community Health (REACH) Trust, and the International Working Group for Health Systems Strengthening (IWGHSS). This brief summarises key points raised by speakers and participants on how climate features are impacting on PHC-oriented health systems; the actions that need to be taken to address these issues at local, national and regional level and in international/ global level processes and forums from a regional lens; issues raised to be further discussed in the other thematic webinars. The brief is shared to draw further comment and input on the issue. The video of the full webinar is also available on the EQUINET website.
In 2023 – 24 EQUINET is organising a series of online dialogues to share knowledge and perspectives from community/local, national and international level on the impact of climate trends, the intersect with the other drivers/ determinants of inequity, the implications for policy and action that links climate to health equity and vice versa, and the . proposals for policy, practice, research, and action. This brief reports on the issues raised in the fourth webinar in the series on climate justice and trade systems, convened by SEATINI-Southern Africa in the EQUINET steering committee. This brief summarises key points raised by speakers and participants on how climate features are impacting on trade and health systems; the actions that need to be taken to address these issues at local, national and regional level and in international/ global level processes and forums from a regional lens; and issues raised to be further discussed in the other thematic webinars. The brief is shared to draw further comment and input on the issue.The video of the full webinar is available on the EQUINET website.
SSM - Health Systems is a new open access journal, edited by Sally Theobald (Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, UK) and John Ataguba (University of Manitoba, Canada). The journal specialises in publishing interdisciplinary social science research that focuses on improving health systems and resources, broadly defined to include health systems and social care and support systems that impact on health and well-being of populations around the world. The journal is inviting submissions and waiving all article publishing charges until 31 December 2023.
Resource-poor areas in sub-Saharan Africa benefit from collaborative research partnerships between clinicians/researchers and industry, but the scientific rigour and research integrity of such collaborations need to be preserved, and research partnerships protected from threats such as conflicts of interest. Science Councils, and Research Ethics Committees (RECs) play key roles in sustaining science and health research, and are eminently positioned to identify, prevent or manage conflicts of interest. UCT, in partnership with researchers in Kenya, Cameroon, Lebanon and elsewhere in South Africa, is providing a free online course aimed at Research Ethics Committee members and Science Granting Council staff to enhance skills to identify, manage and prevent conflict of interest in the health research process. The project also includes an open access toolkit which is a resource for Research Ethics Committee members, Science Granting Council staff, researchers, managers and administrators involved in the research process.