SHP Course

The Strategic Purchasing Africa Resource Center (SPARC) aims to strengthen strategic purchasing in sub-Saharan Africa by empowering countries with the knowledge and practical tools to make access to affordable and quality health care a reality for all. To this end, SPARC, in collaboration with Results for Development (R4D), and the Health Economic Department of the University of Cape town (UCT) have developed a health purchasing curriculum that aims to provide foundational knowledge on strategic purchasing for different audiences, including non-technical and technical audiences.

The curriculum provides materials for training and capacity-building in the concept and application of strategic health purchasing tailored to the context of sub-Saharan Africa that can be adapted for different audiences with different objectives. The curriculum is designed as 3 – 6 interactive sessions; each session is 90 minutes long and delivered in-person or virtually in English and French. 

Two versions of this course have been developed to cater to technical and non-technical audiences respectively.

1. Orientation on Strategic Health Purchasing for a Non-Technical Audience is a foundational level course targeted at individuals who may not have prior knowledge of strategic health purchasing, such as policymakers, CSOs, and funders. The objective of the curriculum is to build a shared understanding of the concept of health purchasing, outline the main purchasing functions and examine options for institutional arrangements and governance for health purchasing, with examples from sub-Saharan African countries. This course aims to answer the question, ‘why purchase strategically?’
2. Overview of Strategic Health Purchasing for a Technical Audience is an advanced level course targeted at individuals with extensive knowledge of strategic health purchasing, such as potential coaches and mentors. In this course, individuals will delve deeper into how to sequence improvements to purchasing functions to make progress, examine options for institutional arrangements and governance for health purchasing and institutional capacity requirements using examples from sub-Saharan African countries. This course will answer the question, ‘how can policymakers/countries be supported by prospective coaches/mentors to lead strategic purchasing reforms?’