A team review into CTAP next steps
On August 12, 2022, the CTAP team held a virtual peer learning session to present and discuss emerging lessons and reflections, to conduct an After Action Review of the progress so far, and to co-design the next learning activities.
In the first part of the session, Yeukai Mukorombindo summarized some of the weaknesses and challenges that health sectors face in the partners countries, including:
- The politicization of health sector by ruling elites
- Competing financial interests
- Corruption
- Information asymmetry in health data
- Mistrust
We then discussed with the partners whether or not these validated or differed from their experiences. While the partners agreed that this list of challenges largely validated their experiences, they suggested a few additional themes that were missing:
- Lack of meaningful and inclusive citizen participation in health systems
- Service delivery implementation gaps
- Vaccine inequity
- Misguided political motivations and high turnover of political administrators/appointees
- Religious and cultural beliefs that discourage or prevent participation in health systems
This input will be incorporated into the learning framework for future activities.
The second part of the session focused on conducting an After Action Review of the country partners’ activities as part of CTAP phase 2 so far. This included sharing and reflecting on what went well, what didn’t go so well, and why. The country partners reported that there was a lot of interest in engaging on issues of accountability in health systems, but barriers included a lack of knowledge and information, obstacles to organizing, and a struggle to coordinate and synthesize different efforts in the space. They noted that local engagement on the issue was vital to efforts to create transparency and accountability in health systems, and that local stakeholders were very enthusiastic about the issue.
In the final part of the session, we discussed potential themes and topics for the next two learning activities and who would be interested in taking an active role in co-designing either activity. We agreed that the first event would focus on rebuilding citizen trust in health service delivery, with the sub-themes of health misinformation and cultural/religious challenges, while the second event would look at investing in health finance and accountability, with the sub-themes of funding universal healthcare and respecting international agreements on health issues.
These two activities are co-designed by GI and the partners, and are being implemented now, during Fall 2022. The first activity took place on September 22nd. We hosted a fireside chat with leads from Kenya, on how are African CSOs are battling vaccine fraud, religious challenges and misinformation with leads from Kenya, Malawi, and Ghana (more here). The next fireside chat is happening on October 20th with leads from Cameroon, Liberia, and Senegal. This time, the conversation will focus on building accountable inclusive health systems to better prepare and respond to current and future pandemics: register here.
