141st APHA Annual Meeting

In This section

292133
Comprehensive capacity-building in a post-conflict country: The liberian experience

Wednesday, November 6, 2013

Saye Baawo, MD , Health Services Department, Ministry of Health and Social Welfare of the Republic of Liberia, Boston, MA
Rose Macauley, MD, MPH , Rebuilding Basic Health Services (RBHS), JSI Research and Training Institute, Monrovia, Liberia
Theo Lippeveld, MD, MPH , International Division, JSI, Boston, MA
Liberia is gradually recovering from a 14 year civil war that destroyed infrastructure and left the country with a heavily reduced work force. In order to ensure basic health services to all its citizens, the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare (MOHSW) developed a ten year National Health and Social Welfare Policy Plan. Rebuilding Basic Health Services (RBHS) is a United States Agency for International Development (USAID) funded initiative supporting the MOHSW towards rebuilding the Liberian health system. This presentation focuses on the capacity building component of the project. In January 2012, the MOHSW has started a massive and comprehensive capacity building (CB) initiative focusing not only at individual, but also at organizational and system levels. Capacity assessments have been organized in April 2012 at central as well as at county levels using the WHO six building block framework for strengthening health systems. Based on the results, strategic and operational plans as well as an implementation approach have been developed. The implementation approach calls for root cause analysis and stakeholders meetings at the start of each of the proposed interventions. CB interventions in each of the six building blocks are now underway at central as well as at county levels. The same capacity assessment tools which were used to establish the baseline will be used to track capacity improvements after a period of two years. The assessment tools, strategy, and implementation approach used by the Liberian MOHSW has the potential to be adapted to other post-conflict countries .

Learning Areas:
Planning of health education strategies, interventions, and programs
Systems thinking models (conceptual and theoretical models), applications related to public health

Learning Objectives:
Assess health system capacity in a post-conflict developing country Identify a series of interventions to build health system capacity addressing individual, organizational, and system capacity Evaluate the impact of the interventions comparing the health system capacity post-intervention with the baseline.

Keywords: Health Reform, Developing Countries

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Qualified on the content I am responsible for because: Dr. Theo Lippeveld currently is the Deputy Chief of Party of the Rebuilding Basic Health Services (RBHS) project in Liberia. Dr. Lippeveld is a public health physician with more than thirty years of experience in developing countries, mainly in Africa. His main areas of expertise are reproductive and child health, health services planning, and health information systems. He has worked for extensive periods in many countries, such as Cameroon, Chad, Congo, Liberia, Morocco, and Pakistan.
Any relevant financial relationships? No

I agree to comply with the American Public Health Association Conflict of Interest and Commercial Support Guidelines, and to disclose to the participants any off-label or experimental uses of a commercial product or service discussed in my presentation.