The triangle that moves the mountain: nine years of Thailand’s National Health Assembly (‎2008-2016)‎

Overview

The case study took place with the dual objective of contributing to both the Thai national reflection process to review 9 years of the NHA, as well as to WHO’s programmatic work stream on providing normative guidance to countries on participatory health governance mechanisms.

As to the former objective, several internal evaluations on specific NHA-related issues have been conducted during the course of the last 9 years, as evinced on the NHA web site and existing documentation. As the NHA approaches its 10th anniversary, it was deemed timely and necessary to examine the NHA process more thoroughly in order to evaluate what works well and less well and reflect on what can be improved or done differently.

As to the latter objective, WHO and Thai colleagues agreed that the NHA process was invaluable as a potential point of orientation to guide other countries in similar ventures. In addition, there is a dearth of NHA documentation in English, an important pre-requisite for dissemination of the NHA experience beyond Thai borders.

WHO has been receiving increasing requests from Member States for technical support for population consultations. This case study is one crucial step in a work programme which will culminate in guidance material for WHO Member States on how to engage with the population for input into health sector decision-making.

The focus of this study is thus on the process itself, i.e. the ‘how’ of consulting with and engaging the population on health issues. The scope explicitly does not include an impact assessment, for which a different methodology would be required; yet it is acknowledged that such an assessment would be extremely useful and, indeed, represents one of the main recommendations of this study.