Challenges facing well-performing PHC systems post-pandemic – is PHC a victim of its own success?
Dear Colleagues,
Warm greetings from Almaty, where we are starting the exciting year 2023 with more country engagement, interesting dialogue opportunities, and launch of key knowledge products.
It will be a very special year for primary health care. On 23 October 2023, the WHO together with the Republic of Kazakhstan will host a high-level Primary Health Care Conference commemorating 45 years of the Alma-Ata and 5 years of the Astana Declarations.
This time, we will focus on implementation successes and concrete tangible results that can be measured to showcase how continuous investment in PHC improves coverage, health outcomes, and ultimately overall health and well-being. We are working on a state-of-the-art online platform so that as many of you can join us without traveling as possible. Let's move forward together.
This year, we will accelerate country support to provide tailored policy advice to Member States. We will launch the 3rd cohort of our PHC Performance Monitoring and Management Training Programme with our Collaborating Center at Amsterdam Medical University. We will continue to prioritize cross-country exchange through our WHO PHC Demonstration Platforms in Kazakhstan and Sweden. You will hear more in the next months and reach out to us if you want to be a part of this movement.
Season 3 of our talk show series "Let's Talk Primary Health Care" is back – join us for our first episode on 7 March! During the last year we've been observing a trend in countries where primary health care systems perform traditionally well – I'm talking about Spain, United Kingdom, Slovenia, Lithuania, Canada for example. These countries are facing more and more significant challenges in the aftermath of the pandemic: increasing demand, workforce shortages, grueling workload, and increasingly reported burn-out.
Could these countries be victims of their own success?
What has been the key to success? How has prestige of the profession and population trust been built? How system solutions supported investment and health workforce policies? What is the way forward to address the performance challenges today?
This talk show episode will discuss these questions in a live conversation with a great panel of experts and practitioners. And of course, stay for the second hour of the talk show – the deep-dive sessions where you can exchange your experience with colleagues from all over the region.
