Strengthening Health Systems for Child Health: Policy Challenges and Future Priorities

The primary objectives of the health system are to ensure responsiveness in health services delivery, enhance technical and allocative efficiency, provide financial risk protection to households accessing healthcare, and improve population health outcomes. Population-level health outcomes, particularly related to maternal and child health, are primarily influenced by access, coverage, and quality of health services. Furthermore, out-of-pocket payments made at the point of care for treatment can lead to catastrophic expenditure and household impoverishment, which result in inequity in the utilisation of health services and benefits at the population level. Hence, it is important to monitor health indicators as well as indicators related to access, coverage, and quality of health services and take corrective action to address health system challenges. The WHO has identified six core health system building blocks: health financing, health workforce, health information systems, essential medicines, service delivery, and governance/leadership. A health system-based approach is critical to understanding interdependencies among these building blocks and their impact on health service delivery and population health outcomes. Recent research and empirical evidence have demonstrated that strengthening the health system improves access and coverage of health services and population health outcomes, particularly maternal and child health outcomes, significantly.