“Strengthening Strategic Health Purchasing in Africa—Changing the Conversation”

POLICY DIALOGUE SERIES:

The Strategic Purchasing Africa Resource Centre (SPARC) is pleased to invite you to the first webinar in the policy dialogue series “Strengthening Strategic Health Purchasing in Africa—Changing the Conversation.” In this series SPARC will host conversations between policymakers and technical partners to better understand what drives progress on strategic health purchasing in sub-Saharan Africa through the lens of health purchasing functions—specifying benefits packages, contracting, provider payment, and performance monitoring– rather than specific schemes or solutions.

Please join us for the first webinar in the series

“Strategic Health Purchasing Progress: A Theory of Change and Practical Steps”

This webinar will take place on Wednesday May 19, 2021 from 4:00 PM to 5:30 PM (EAT). Policymakers and SPARC technical partners will share a functional framework for describing a country’s health purchasing arrangements and the results they achieve, and the application of the framework in 9 African countries. Panelists will highlight key areas of progress and lessons for policymakers drawn from across the continent. 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.

Panelists

Raymond Kiwesa

Raymond Kiwesa, is a Principal Health Administrator who works at the President’s Office-Regional Administration and Local Government as a Coordinator of Direct Health Facility Financing (DHFF) with a major role of coordinating and facilitating Health Facility operations, overseeing functioning of the governance structures at the facility level as well as monitoring the performance. He is an experienced health systems management professional with a demonstrated history of working in hospitals and the health care industry in general.

Raymond Kiwesa is a Health Systems Management professional with a Bachelor degree in Health Administration and a Masters Degree in Health Systems Management from Mzumbe University (Tanzania).

Dr. Lydia Dsane-Selby

A Medical Doctor by profession with a specialty in ENT, Dr. Lydia Dsane-Selby is a product of the University of Ghana Medical School. She is currently the Chief Executive of the NHIA. She has 13 years + experience with the organisation including 4 years each as the Director Clinical Audit and Director Claims Management and 2 years as the Deputy Chief Executive, Operations. She has played an integral part in several key innovations: the development of the DRG payment mechanism, the development of the accreditation tools and process, the introduction of clinical audits with the development of tools and a manual, the introduction of e-claims with business rules for cost containment and the use of mobile technology to renew membership & authentication of members at provider sites.

She has been the co-convener of the Joint Learning Network – a network of 34 countries who are striving to achieve UHC through peer learning and knowledge co-creation.

DDG Regis Hitimana

Dr Regis Hitimana, RSSB’s Deputy Director General in charge of Benefits, is a Health Economist with experience in national health policy and in Research. With a bachelor degree in Business administration and management, Dr Regis started his career in Project Management in NGOs based in Rwanda. He later moved to the Rwanda Ministry of Health where he served as Specialist in charge of Planning, Monitoring & Evaluation for about five year since 2010. Prior to his appointment at RSSB in 2020, Dr Regis Hitimana was a lecturer since 2014 at University of Rwanda’s School of Public Health, College of Medicine and Health Sciences.

Dr Regis Hitimana has co-authored a dozen of scientific manuscripts in areas of health policy, economics and financing, six of which have been published in peer-reviewed journals, while others are still in the process. Dr Regis Hitimana has a MSc in Epidemiology from University of Rwanda’s School of Public Health and PhD in Health Economics from Umeå University, Sweden.

Moderators

Nathaniel Otoo

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 of the Duke University Launch & Scale Speedometer Advisory Board. He also serves on several other boards.

Dr Nkechi Olalere

Executive Director, SPARC

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

Nkechi has over sixteen years’ experience in health financing implementation. Before joining the development sector, she served as a C-suite executive in various health insurance firms operating the National Health Insurance Scheme and private health insurance plans in Nigeria. She is passionate about strategic purchasing, especially provider payment reforms, several of which she led in the private health insurance space. Nkechi’s experience in the private and public sectors gives her an interesting perspective into health system strengthening.

Nkechi is the chair of Africa Union’s (AU) Tracker sub-committee tasked with developing indicators and measures of progress for ‘More Health for the Money’. This work is an input into the domestic health financing tracker, which will complement the Africa Scorecard on Domestic Financing for Health and enable AU Member States to track progress on domestic financing, including its efficient and effective allocation and use. She has recently been appointed into the newly formed Global Financing Facility Results Advisory Group.

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.

POLICY DIALOGUE SERIES: