Reduced number of people suffering financial hardship

The Secretariat will support countries to: develop skills, systems and governance arrangements in order to implement more strategic health services financing and purchasing and adapt those mechanisms over time to align payment mechanisms with promised benefits; to improve contracting with public and private providers; to use payment systems data to guide policy; and to drive greater efficiency, equity and quality as a means of sustaining progress on extending service coverage with financial protection; use the health financing progress matrix to track the extent of country progress consistent with good practices, and provide a basis for linking future quantitative findings to specific health financing actions; formulate results-oriented health budgets and align health financing reforms with national public financial management arrangements that ensure more efficient and equitable use of resources; apply technical frameworks and diagnostics in developing health financing policies and designing implementation, taking into account political economy challenges and the need to align such tools with public financial management systems if reforms are to be institutionalized and sustained; incorporate public health services and programmes into national health financing strategies and plans for transitioning away from aid funding; design fiscal policies that are pro-health and pro-support for poor communities, aligned with broader Sustainable Development Goal priorities; assess options and identify priorities for financing arrangements in fragile and conflict-affected situations; conduct strategic health services purchasing across both the set of defined benefits and approaches tailored to the specificities of particular diseases and interventions, and to develop related governance arrangements to align financing with health system goals; engage with non-health government sectors on key areas, such as budgetary space for health and public financial management; and strengthen capacity in health financing through e-learning and face-to-face training (through the WHO Academy) programmes, knowledge exchanges, managed study tours and peer-to-peer learning.