Health Sector Decentralization: Can it Still Deliver?
July 29, 2020
8:00 am EDT
Can decentralization accelerate the journey to self-reliance?
Whether decentralization of health across functions and financing delivers on improving access, coverage, financial protection, and quality depends on design decisions and fidelity of implementation.
After all, why do countries decide to decentralize? What challenges do they face in assigning functions appropriately, and agreeing on stewardship roles? Does financing follow function, or decentralization in principle masks continuing centralization of funding authority in practice?
These questions and more will be tackled in our upcoming webinar featuring speakers covering the cases of Kenya and Indonesia, spanning two very different experiences of fiscal and administrative devolution to subnational governments.
As countries move toward increasing self-reliance, continued and more effective decentralization in the health sector may be necessary to better respond to citizens’ health needs. Yet, the COVID-19 emergency has highlighted the need for rapid mobilization of funds and use of centralized powers and abilities to coordinate at scale.
In the future, if decentralization is to deliver greater accountability and responsiveness in service delivery, lessons learned from diverse settings should be tailored to context and applied.
Explore these questions and unpack the experiences of two countries that mark continued large-scale attempts at decentralization of health sector financing and governance, and to review their lessons learned.
