Strategic Purchasing Africa Resource Centre (SPARC)

“Exploring Universal Health Coverage Funding And Payment Reforms for Primary Health Care in Africa.”
2021-07-27 14:00 - 16:00 (Africa/Nairobi)
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As part of its mandate to serve as a complimentary resource and partner to the many health financing initiatives on the African continent and globally, SPARC has partnered with The African Forum for Primary Health Care (AfroPHC) to organize a webinar themed, “Exploring Universal Health Coverage Funding And Payment Reforms for Primary Health Care in Africa.”

The webinar aims to provide a forum to share experiences and discuss issues affecting Primary Health Care (PHC) funding towards universal health coverage (UHC) advancement in Africa. The session will leverage country experiences of panelists to increase awareness of options for PHC Financing and brainstorm solutions to its challenges in Africa.

The webinar will have French translation services.

Findings from Strategic Purchasing Mapping in Burkina Faso: Drivers of Progress, Challenges and Recommendations’ from 3 pm GMT | 4 pm WAT | 6 pm EAT. #SPARCchat 15
2021-07-13 18:00 - 19:00 (Africa/Nairobi)
Broadly, strategic purchasing is the efficient use of limited resources to deliver maximum health outcomes for everyone. It involves the use of information to make purchasing decisions, including what to buy, who to buy from and how to pay. Strategic purchasing explores ways to provide quality healthcare services to priority populations, especially the most vulnerable and needy, using limited resources. Burkina Faso has made progress in strategic health purchasing in its Gratuité program and community-based health insurance (CBHI) schemes by prioritizing services through explicit benefit packages, contracting with providers, and introducing output-based provider payment that links payment to service delivery objectives. Various forms of provider performance monitoring are used, and Gratuité involves national and international nongovernmental organizations in auditing provider claims for accountability and transparency. This Twitter chat will explore Burkina Faso’s progress and challenges, and recommendations made to improve strategic purchasing in light of the current status of purchasing functions in the country.

Leveraging Performance-Based Financing for Strategic Health Purchasing
2021-06-30 16:00 - 17:30 (Africa/Nairobi)
The Strategic Purchasing Africa Resource Centre (SPARC) is pleased to invite you to the second webinar in the policy dialogue series “Strengthening Strategic Health Purchasing in Africa – Changing the Conversation.” This webinar will focus on Leveraging Performance-Based Financing (PBF) for Strategic Health Purchasing.

The webinar will take place on Wednesday, June 30, 2021, from 4:00 – 5:30 PM (EAT). In this webinar, policymakers will highlight opportunities and challenges with moving health systems towards Strategic Health Purchasing leveraging PBF schemes that have been implemented in many countries of sub-Saharan Africa. The discussion will be grounded in the evidence synthesis SPARC conducted in partnership with KEMRI Wellcome Trust to examine whether and how PBF schemes can be leveraged for more holistic strategic purchasing in a country’s health system.

Please join the conversation that promises to “sparc” new insights and practical steps countries can take to better leverage strategic purchasing within current health financing systems to achieve universal health coverage goals.

Real-time interpretation in French will be available.

Register here!

Strategic Health Purchasing - 'Changing the Conversation'
2021-03-09 15:15 - 17:15 (Africa/Nairobi)
Two years after the SPARC launch, what has changed in the landscape of strategic health purchasing on the continent? Register for the SPARC session on day two of this year’s #AHAIC2021 virtual conference to learn more. Click here to register.

February Twitter Chat: ‘The Role of Community Participation in Strategic Purchasing Interventions'
2021-02-09 18:00 - 19:00 (Africa/Nairobi) | Twitter
What is the role of communities in Strategic Health Purchasing interventions? Are there avenues to inform the community about their rights, obligations and entitlements? Join us on February 9th as we discuss this and much more.

‘Enhancing Accountability Through Provider Contracts - How Provider Contracts Can Be Used To Align Provider Behaviour and Incentivize Quality Health Services’
2020-11-10 18:00 - 19:00 (Africa/Nairobi) | Twitter
Africa needs to advance on its implementation of strategic health purchasing (SHP). Join us for our #SPARCchat VIII as we discuss how provider contracts can be used to align provider behaviour and incentivize quality health services.

Advancing Strategic Health Purchasing in Africa – Exploring the Value of Involving Technical and Political Stakeholders
2020-10-13 18:00 - 19:00 (Africa/Nairobi) | Twitter
As countries continue to make incremental progress on strategic health purchasing (SHP), it is increasingly important to measure and track their advancement as well as the system effects and results of their progress. SPARC’s technical partners populated the SHP progress mapping framework with baseline data for their countries, and this work culminated in an in-person convening held between January 21 – 23, 2020.

The SHP progress mapping framework is a tool that documents the SHP functions, required SHP organizational capacities, and related governance arrangements. It aims to identify how these SHP functions and capabilities are used as levers to improve resource allocation and accountability for quality health services, as well as appropriate incentives to purchasers, providers and consumers of health services.

This upcoming Twitter chat is part of a series to synthesize and discuss lessons and emerging themes across countries that participated in SPARC’s first progress mapping activity to answer questions on what works and why. In our first series, we will be looking at unpacking the progress of strategic health purchasing in Africa and share knowledge on the importance of involving technical and political stakeholders in strategic purchasing reforms.

COVID-19 Response – A Global Perspective with Lessons from Africa on Strategic Health Purchasing.
2020-09-08 18:00 - 19:00 (Africa/Nairobi)
We shall be hosting our 6th edition of #SPARCchat. The topic of discussion will be “COVID-19 Response – A Global Perspective with Lessons from Africa on Strategic Health Purchasing. Our SPARCchat VI panelists are:

Nathaniel Otoo, Senior Fellow, Results for Development

Nathaniel Otoo is a Health Systems & Public Policy Consultant and a Senior Fellow at Results for Development Institute. He was the founding Executive Director of the Strategic Purchasing Africa Resource Centre (SPARC) hosted at Amref Health Africa in Nairobi, Kenya. He has over 11-years of work experience in health insurance implementation and served as CEO of Ghana’s National Health Insurance Authority from 2015 to 2017. Nathaniel has contributed to and supported numerous global, regional and local UHC activities and events. A founding member of the JLN, and later its first convener, Nathaniel is a member the Duke University Launch & Scale Speedometer Advisory Board. He also serves on several other boards.

Cheryl Cashin, Managing Director, Results for Development

Cheryl Cashin, PhD, is a managing director at Results for Development in the global health practice. In that role she co-leads a portfolio of more than 20 projects and initiatives in global health systems, and she serves on R4D’s executive team. Dr. Cashin has led several initiatives at R4D that aim to build new models of support for countries to address complex health system issues. She designed the Provider Payment Mechanisms technical initiative of the Joint Learning Network for Universal Health Coverage (JLN) and has led the initiative since it was launched in 2011, and she is currently leading R4D’s technical support to Strategic Purchasing Africa Resource Center (SPARC) in partnership with Amref Health Africa.

Dr Nkechi Olalere, Executive Director, SPARC

Dr. Nkechi Olalere is the Executive Director of the Strategic Purchasing Africa Resource Center (SPARC) and steers the organization’s vision of empowering countries with knowledge and practical tools to make access to affordable and quality health care a reality for all.

She joined SPARC from the Clinton Health Access Initiative, Inc. (CHAI) where she served as the Regional Technical Advisor, supporting CHAI Sustainable Health Financing teams and their government partners in East and West Africa. Recently, she also led CHAI’s support to the Rwanda Social Security Board as the Technical Advisor to the Community Based Health Insurance Scheme where she spearheaded various reforms.

Nkechi has over sixteen years’ experience in health financing implementation and before joining the development sector, she served at different times, as both start-up and turn-around C-suite executive in various health insurance firms operating the National Health Insurance Scheme and private health insurance plans in Nigeria.

SPARC TWITTER CHAT: The Role of Governance in Purchasing for the COVID-19 Response
2020-08-11 18:00 - 19:00 (Africa/Nairobi) | Twitter
Join us for #SPARCchat V! We will be discussing, “The Role of Governance in Purchasing for the COVID-19 Response.”

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11th August from 3PM GMT|4PM WAT|6PM EAT

Live Webinar: From the frontlines of the COVID-19 Response - Lessons learnt from Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)
2020-07-30 17:00 - 18:00 (Africa/Nairobi) | Zoom Webinar
You are invited to a Zoom webinar.

When: Jul 30, 2020 05:00 PM Nairobi

Topic: From the frontlines of the COVID-19 Response – Lessons learnt from Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)

Register in advance for this webinar:

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar.

Learn More

Webinar Speakers

Dr. Samuel Roger Kamba (Special Advisor, Universal Health Coverage @DRC)

Dr. Samuel Roger Kamba is a medical doctor with 30 years of practice. He holds a medical degree from the University of Kinshasa and a post- graduate in Pediatrics from the University of Picardy, Amiens, France. He has over 22 years’ specialization experience in pediatrics and is a trainer in pediatrics resuscitation.

In 2019, Dr. Kamba was nominated by the DRC President, Felix Tshisekedi, as the Special Adviser in charge of UHC, to lead the effort to implement the President’s holistic vision of universal health care for the Congolese population. In this role, he is responsible for the coordination of all state and private actors, including religious health institutions involved in the establishment of UHC in the DRC and oversees the development of strategic and normative plans and documentation. To cope with COVID-19 impact, Dr. Kamba was nominated by President Felix Tshisekedi as the COVID-19 Task Force Coordinator and personal representative.

Dr Gisèle Mbuyi (Surveillance, Disease Control and Emergency & Disaster Management @Ministry of Health, DRC)

Dr. Gisèle Mbuyi is a medical doctor with a bachelor’s degree from the University of Kinshasa and a Master’s degree in Public Health from the School of Public Health of the Université Libre de Bruxelles (2008-2009). She also holds a Master’s degree in eco-epidemiology from the University of Kinshasa (2014-2015). Since 2005, she has been working in surveillance, disease control, and emergency and disaster management in the Ministry of Health of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Dr. Mbuyi is the Chair of the Epidemiological Surveillance Committee within the larger Multisectoral Committee in charge of fighting against the COVID-19 epidemic in the DRC.

Mr. Joel Lamika Kalabudi (National Communication Programme for Health Promotion (PNCPS) @Ministry of Public Health, DRC)

Mr. Joel Lamika Kalabudi is a graduate of the University of Kinshasa with a degree in Organizational Communication. He is currently a researcher on behaviour change communication at the same university. He works at the Ministry of Public Health in the National Communication Programme for Health Promotion (PNCPS). With regard to the COVID – 19 pandemic in the DRC, he is the Chairman of the Digital Communication, handling of misinformation, disinformation and community feedback pillar. Mr. Kalabudi is a member of the Risk Communication and Community Involvement Committee within the larger Multisectoral Committee in charge of fighting against the COVID-19 epidemic in the DRC.

Moderated by

Joseph Maabo Tankwa, Health Economist. Expert in Strategic Purchasing, Researcher at Research for Development Intl & Africa Policy Management

Mr. Joseph Maabo Tankwa is a research consultant at Research for Development International (R4D Intl) and Africa Policy Management Consultancy Group. He is a graduate of the University of Yaoundé in Cameroon with a degree in Economics and a diploma in Education(Economics) from the Advanced Teachers Training College in Yaoundé. Mr. Tankwa is currently engaged in providing research services on Universal Health Coverage (UHC) at the Catholic University of Cameroon.

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Universal Health Coverage Course for Health Leaders and Managers
2020-07-06 09:00 - 2020-07-10 13:00 UTC
In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, countries are working
towards advancing Universal Health Care (UHC) and strategic health
purchasing (SHP) to guarantee service delivery to populations they
serve.

SPARC has partnered with Amref International
University and the Institute of Capacity Development to build capacity
of health leaders and managers across Africa in UHC and
SHP.

Our inaugural five – day course commences today with
the first cohort from Amref Health Africa and strategic partners.

The course will cover the following key areas:

Introduction to health systemsIntroduction to UHCService CoverageFinancial ProtectionAdvocacy for UHCPopulation CoverageGovernance Arrangements for SHPClaims ManagementSocial AccountabilityHealth EquityProvider Payment Mechanisms

Look out for this course in future as we shall be rolling it out to health leaders and managers in Africa.
