Welcome to the Health Systems Development Web-Site

The HSD programme was established to help understand the factors that constrain health systems from meeting the needs of the poor and to critically assess alternative approaches to overcoming those constraints. This site presents the key findings of research undertaken by academic partners around the world, as funded by the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID) from 2000-2006.

For more information about HSD, please email contact-hsd@lshtm.ac.uk.

Making health systems work for the poor: joint meeting with Oxfam and the All Party Group for Debt Aid and Trade (APG DATA)

London (UK), 11 December 2006 – Professor Barbara McPake and colleagues will present key findings from research undertaken within the HSD programme at a meeting bringing together researchers, policy-makers and aid agencies working on international health and poverty.

HSD presentations will focus on:

• the crucial role of effective health systems in reducing poverty and delivering on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)
• how health systems design must focus more on the human factor - the way that the motivations and responses of both health workers and health users affect access of the poor to health services
• how health planners and researchers need new tools to help them recognise these patterns of behaviour and health system responses in order to design effective health interventions.

Oxfam will present its perspective on how well national health systems and the international development initiatives are doing in making progress towards achieving the health-related MDGs – reducing infant and child mortality, cutting maternal mortality and promoting access for all to reproductive health services.

Representatives from HSD, Oxfam, DFID, Health Unlimited, and the Chronic Poverty Research Centre will lead discussions on both the research findings and the experience of a range of agencies on making access to healthcare for the poorest people a reality.

For more information, please email the meeting organiser frances.hill@btconnect.com.