2018 was a crucial year for public health with the push for universal health coverage (UHC) on World Health Day to help achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the introduction of the World Health Organization’s new ambitious “triple billion” targets. The Member States have the challenging task of translating and operationalizing these targets into their own unique context to realize Health for All.
In the Philippines, the Department of Health (DOH) is leading the way towards a national health measurement system through a consultative and highly iterative activity of determining metrics for performance, supported by WHO Philippines.
A key feature of the Philippines’ approach to target setting and accountability is to ensure the measurement system is cascaded down all the way to local government units and health partners.
“The Philippines has developed a harmonized measurement system that draws a straight line from Geneva and New York all the way to the village level based on a system of indicators and score cards,” said WHO Representative in the Philippines Dr Gundo Weiler. “This approach allows health workers at every level to see relate their work to the SDGs, and become more accountable for achieving a healthier, safer and fairer Philippines.”
Under the leadership of Secretary Francisco Duque III, the Health Department introduced FOURmula One Plus for Health (F1 Plus), a strategic framework with the vision of healthier Filipinos by achieving UHC. F1 Plus has five pillars: health financing, service delivery, regulation, governance and performance accountability system. With the local F1 Plus framework on hand and keeping in mind global targets, the DOH and their health partners developed a system of metrics and monitoring and evaluation (M&E) to ensure that the health system is responsive to the needs of the Filipinos.
“F1 Plus is a roadmap, it’s a game plan and it has to be very clear. At the end of the day, without leadership, all these strategic planning and M&Es come for naught,” shared Secretary Duque.
WHO Philippines Representative Dr Gundo Weiler (left) with Health Secretary Francisco Duque III during a monitoring and evaluation workshop for FOURmula One Plus for Health on 31 August 2018. Photo: WHO/F. Tanggol
Through a set of activities, the DOH partnered with key health sector players to finalize the metrics, including development, vetting and consensus building and further expert examination.
Accountability is an important aspect in the metrics exercise, so the participation of health partners and local government representatives were essential. A scorecard system was developed to track the accountability of key health actors from national to the local government level in both results and performance of F1 Plus and the global SDGs and triple billion targets.
In addition, the Philippines is also setting up systems to improve data quality in the country through the introduction of subnational burden of disease estimates and identification of priority policy, legislation, and research actions.
Participants from the Department of Health with support from WHO Philippines and the Institute for Health Metrics, during the in-country meeting to set up systems for burden of diseases estimates held last 12-14 November 2018. WHO/P. Hernandez
These activities resulted in the finalization of the 55 core set of indicators (10 impact and 45 outcome/output) as well as 38 international tracking indicators. All 44 indicators under the triple billion targets were captured in the priority list of Philippines’ F1 Plus results framework.
“This [framework] is good but it will be ineffective if we cannot translate this on what are the desired outcomes that can be felt on the ground by the Filipino people. Let's leave them a legacy that is truly felt,” Secretary Duque said.
Related links:
Ensuring and measuring universality in UHC
Tracking universal health coverage: 2017 Global Monitoring Report