Enhanced L4UHC Programme Goes Live

Representatives from three countries – Cambodia, Nepal and Pakistan – will be the first to participate in an enhanced version of the Leadership for UHC (L4UHC) programme, updated to address the challenges of the pandemic and to provide more intense country-level support.

The in-person event will take place in the first quarter of 2022 in Sri Lanka, a country that has achieved remarkable UHC results with limited resources.

Originally launched in 2015, L4UHC enables senior decision-makers to develop the collaborative skills and collective actions needed to bring together different national stakeholders to advance UHC. So far, 14 countries in Africa and Asia have benefited from the one-year programme, including Cambodia, Nepal and Pakistan. Crucially, all the participants develop and implement tangible, ‘collective actions’ in their countries to trigger wider, systemic change. Examples include:

Cambodia created a payment certification agency and rolled out a national quality assessment system;
Nepal reformed how it procures drugs, helping to improve drug availability and distribution, and established a health financing strategy;
And Pakistan has made significant headway in increasing UHC enrolment, with private sector support.

The enhanced version of the programme will not only enable existing and new partner countries, such as Indonesia and India, to accelerate and further develop their collective actions, but also provide deeper national-level support.

Although international exchanges will continue to take place to inspire new thinking, as in the visit to Sri Lanka, there will be a much stronger focus on each country’s national context and the tools needed to conceive and orchestrate change. This will include more intense coaching for individual and coalition leadership, supported by approaches such as human centred design, agile project management and systems thinking. Country focal persons from the P4H network and other partners will facilitate bespoke support.

Significantly, L4UHC has introduced regional implementing partners to provide greater technical support – one of the recommendations of an independent evaluation of the programme – and to facilitate regional knowledge-sharing. This will also strengthen regional ownership. The Institute for Health Policy in Sri Lanka, the host of the spring event, will be L4UHC’s regional partner in Asia.

For more information about L4UHC and its enhanced approach, contact info@l4uhc.world