Harvy Joy Liwanag

• MD | MBA | PhD
• Postdoctoral Research Fellow at University of Bern

Accountability can improve equal opportunities for women’s career progression and it must be strengthened in the health sector, argue Kent Buse and colleagues

Organisations that perform Health Policy and Systems Research (HPSR) need robust capacities, but it remains unclear how these organisations should look like in practice. We sought to define ‘HPSRIs’ (pronounced as ‘hip-srees’, i.e., ‘Health Policy and Systems Research Institutions’) as organisational models and developed a conceptual framework for...

Introduction: Prior research has linked media tobacco promotion to increased tobacco use and favorable perceptions of tobacco products. Switzerland's tobacco lobby employs advertisements to sway policy decisions in its favor, yet no recent research has assessed this in detail. Our study aims to provide detailed estimates of tobacco industry (TI) ad...

Introduction: Accountability is a complex idea to unpack and involves different processes in global health practice. Calls for accountability in global health would be better translated to action through a better understanding of the concept and practice of accountability in global health. We sought to analyse accountability processes in practice i...

Background Participatory approaches are considered essential to ensure community health in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Previous reviews on community participation have explored different aspects of participation in specific contexts, such as public health emergencies, but none has examined participatory approaches both in depth and in bre...

The transition from the COVID-19 pandemic offers a strategic opportunity to build back better and use the disruption to transform health systems. This Policy Brief calls on the G20 to take the lead in health systems transformation. Health systems need to reorient to primary health care to address fragmentation and deliver health services in a compr...

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced many governments to halt public transport operations. A consequence of such disruption is the reduction in access to critical facilities by individuals who rely on public transport for their daily mobility. We investigate the impact disparities caused by the restriction of public transportation on the access of heal...

Objectives: Primary care and public health comprise the bedrock of health systems, but their divergence has produced two groups of practitioners either focused on individual health or population health. We explored how primary care and public health were integrated in medical students’ training in Zamboanga Peninsula, Philippines. Methods: Our qual...

Background: The Philippines passed landmark legislation in 2019 on universal health coverage, including reforms in the development of its health workforce, an essential building block of responsive health care systems. Health Workforce Planning Cocreation Process: We based our planning process on a model of cocreation defined as sharing power and...

This paper identifies the value and challenges in introducing rapid prototyping of policy to design non-expert and expert groups by analysing an online workshop series that was conducted with early-career professionals, policy makers, and design researchers. The COVID-19 pandemic evidenced, even more, the need for situated policies in the area of h...

Education is society’s greatest equalizer and a significant determinant of sustainable economic growth. Halting education exacerbates socio-economic and gender inequalities within and between countries and negatively impacts future generations. Despite this, together with the evidence of negative direct and indirect effects on children and adolesce...

Decolonising global health has gained momentum in recent years and has called for more reflexive individuals. However, the call to be reflexive may run the risk of becoming lip service without clarity on what reflexivity requires. We diverge from reflexivity’s usual place in qualitative research, bring it closer to individual positionalities and...

Background: The Philippines decentralized government health services through devolution to local governments in 1992. Over the years, opinions varied on the impact of devolved governance to decision-making for local health services. The objective of this study was to analyze decision-makers' perspectives on who should be making decisions for local...

Decentralization has been promoted as a strategy to bring decision-making closer to local levels where people know better their needs. In the health sector, however, the evidence for its effectiveness has been mixed. This PhD thesis analyzed the effectiveness of decentralization in improving the health sector by focusing on the Philippines where he...

Background Several studies on decentralisation have used the ‘decision space’ approach to assess the breadth of space made available to decision-makers at lower levels of the health system. However, in order to better understand how decentralisation becomes effective for the health sector, analysis should go beyond assessing decision space and incl...

Background Decentralization is promoted as a strategy to improve health system performance by bringing decision-making closer to service delivery. Some studies have investigated if decentralization actually improves the health system. However, few have explored the conditions that enable it to be effective. To determine these conditions, we have an...

Analyzing the effectiveness of decentralization in improving the health sector with a focus on the Philippines. Key Informant Interview (KII) Guide. (PDF)

Objective: Neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) continue to be a public health problem in the Philippines. We assessed the association of soil-transmitted helminthiasis (STH) and schistosomiasis with selected health-related and socioeconomic variables in four villages in Leyte, Philippines. Methods: Stool specimens from 418 adults and 533 of their...

While preventive chemotherapy remains to be a major strategy for the prevention and control of soil-transmitted helminthiases (STH), improvements in water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) comprise the long-term strategy to achieve sustained control of STH. This study examined the parasitological and nutritional status of school-age and preschool-age...

The latest World Health Organization (WHO) strategic plan for eliminating soil-transmitted helminthiases (STHs) as a public health problem in children puts the emphasis on school-age children. On the other hand, the Philippine national helminth control program excludes secondary school students in mass deworming for STH. This study determined the p...