Improved access to quality essential health services irrespective of gender, age or disability

The Secretariat will step up its leadership by: synthesizing and disseminating WHO?s guiding values and principles on health systems governance for universal health coverage; ensuring that comprehensive plans and strategies, and legal and institutional arrangements exist and are combined with effective oversight, coalition-building, regulation and attention to system design; promoting collective action, transparency and accountability and mitigating the risk of corruption; supporting gender-responsive, equity-oriented and human rights-based participatory approaches to ensure that no one is left behind; leveraging a variety of knowledge networks, including the Health Systems Governance Collaborative, to drive consensus among key stakeholders (countries, partner entities, multilateralism, parliamentarians, academia, civil society and private sector); partnering in the Health Systems Governance Collaborative, which aims to advance governance in health systems for universal health coverage by convening a great variety of stakeholders involved in health systems governance; and shaping the health governance policy agenda at global, regional and country levels. The Secretariat will support countries to: engage with national health assemblies and parliamentarians? networks, civil society and the private sector and enact societal dialogue to take action on common goods for health (e.g. policy formulation and analysis; health sector coordination; integrated strategic health information, analysis and communication; regulation and legislation; fiscal instruments; and population services); build and maintain fit-for-purpose health sector institutional arrangements at national and subnational levels in order to strengthen mixed health systems governance and the integration of national, subnational and local health governance; engage with non-State health actors and citizens, particularly voiceless and disempowered groups (beneficiaries) in public health policy formulation, analysis, coordination, implementation, oversight and regulation at national and subnational levels; manage dialogue on national health policies, strategies and plans, as well as governance transformation, in order to enhance diverse and balanced participation; develop comprehensive and gender-responsive, equity-enhancing and human rights-based national health policies and strategies that enable universal health coverage; establish health laws, regulatory arrangements and programmes that reach all health sector stakeholders, including in the public and private sectors, and are grounded in human rights approaches and consistent with the Sustainable Development Goals; establish and improve institutional and regulatory arrangements for community participation in health decision-making in order to increase transparency, accountability and responsiveness to public expectations at national, subnational and local levels; engage in health systems governance networks and platforms for collaborative and actionable governance; strengthen health sector governance and leadership capacities and skills at national, subnational and local levels; and increase health systems accountability and mitigate the risk of corruption by strengthening institutional arrangements and supportive regulations.