Community Health (CHU4UHC) Platforms Approach, Kenya (initiated June 2020)
Spark Health team (left) with the Permanent Secretary of the Uganda Ministry of Health Dr Diane Atwiine (3rd from left) and senior Ministry of Health officials.
To achieve Universal Health Coverage stakeholders need to address the fragmentation common in many health systems which leads to program departments, implementing partners, and other actors focusing on single issues with limited to no coordination and collaboration. This siloed approach exacerbates resource constraints as stakeholders compete for resources in some areas and over fund others. Deeper collaboration driven by a government-led common vision can improve coordination allowing actors to compliment and reinforce each other’s activities maximizing the return on available resources.
The CHU4UHC Platform aims to break down silos for stakeholders working in Community Health in Kenya to contribute towards UHC based on their strengths, expertise and areas of interest. The Platform is a Ministry of Health-led and Johnson and Johnson Foundation supported initiative that brings together multi-sectoral stakeholders to deliberately and intentionally work together thereby cultivating a culture based on collective impact.
Spark Health Africa contributes to the platform as a backbone organization that provides strategic leadership and thought partnership to drive the architecture development of the platform.
Read more about the Platform
In the video below, Johnson & Johnson’s Anthony Gitau discusses why it’s important to break down silos in global health and how private-public partnerships like the community health units for universal health coverage (CHU4UHC) platform in Kenya is helping to achieve this.