Jesper Sundewall

• Karolinska Institutet

Background Violence is a major public health concern with a significant impact on the health and well-being of individuals, families, and communities. Living in a new environment without parental control and experimenting with new lifestyles may increase the risk of violence among university students. Therefore, this study aimed to assess exposure...

Introduction An increasing number of sub-Saharan African countries are implementing national health insurance schemes (NHISs) to support the aspiration of universal health coverage (UHC). A growing body of literature recognises the private sector role in improving NHIS equity in service access, public provider complementarity and overall member sat...

Background As the deadline for the Sustainable Development Goals approaches, financial protection in Cambodia remains inadequate, especially for nonpoor informal workers lacking formal social health protection coverage or access to other prepayment schemes. This exposes them to high out-of-pocket health expenditures (OOPE) and related financial har...

Plain Language Summary Background to the study The use of effective methods of contraception (also known as modern contraception) has several advantages including prevention of dropping out of school due to unintended pregnancies, increased freedom to choose when to have a child, among others. Such advantages translate into development of the comm...

Background Risky sexual behavior (RSB) is one of the major youth sexual and reproductive health problems globally, including in Ethiopia. RSB among youth increases the risk of HIV infection, other sexually transmitted infections (STIs), unintended pregnancy, and unsafe abortion. Therefore, the aim of this study was to examine RSB and its associated...

Background Addressing attitudes is central to achieving sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) and Agenda 2030. We aimed to develop a comprehensive index to measure attitudinal support for SRHR, expanding opportunities for global trend analyses and tailored interventions. Methods We designed a new module capturing attitudes towards diffe...

Background Low- and middle-income countries have committed to achieving universal health coverage (UHC) as a means to enhance access to services and improve financial protection. One of the key health financing reforms to achieve UHC is the introduction or expansion of health insurance to enhance access to basic health services, including maternal...

Using data on 119 low- and lower-middle income countries from 2002 to 2020, we apply fixed-effects (FE) methods to evaluate the impacts of three different classifications of development assistance on access to three types of sexual and reproductive health (SRH) services: access to skilled birth attendance, prevalence of modern contraceptives, and c...

Achieving universal health coverage (UHC) is a priority of most low- and middle-income countries, reflecting governments’ commitments to improved population health. However, high levels of informal employment in many countries create challenges to progress toward UHC, with governments struggling to extend access and financial protection to informal...

Over the past decades, many low- and middle-income countries have implemented health financing and system reforms to progress towards universal health coverage (UHC). In the case of Cambodia, out-of-pocket expenditure (OOPE) remains the main source of current health expenditure after several decades of reform, exposing households to financial risks...

Expanding service coverage and achieving universal health coverage (UHC) is a priority for many low- and middle-income countries. Though UHC is a long-term goal, its importance and relevance have only increased since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. The first step on the road to UHC is to define and develop essential packages of health services...

In 2015, the Zambian government and the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida) signed an agreement in which Sida committed to funding a program for Reproductive, Maternal, Newborn, Child, Adolescent Health and Nutrition (RMNCAH). The program includes a results-based financing (RBF) model that aims to reward Zambian districts fo...

This EBA report aims to increase the understanding of values and norms related to SRHR and gender in Sub-Saharan Africa. In addition, it maps Swedish aid to SRHR and identifies gaps and opportunities for Swedish development cooperation supporting SRHR. In the first part of the study, data on values and norms related to gender and SRHR are collected...

Sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) are an essential component of universal health coverage (UHC). In determining which SRHR interventions to include in their UHC benefits package, countries are advised to evaluate each service based on robust and reliable data, including cost-effectiveness data. We conducted a scoping review of full e...

Sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) and universal health coverage (UHC) are fundamental to health as a human right. One way that countries operationalise UHC is through the development of an essential package of health services (EPHS), which describes a list of clinical and public health services that a government aspires to provide fo...

Background: A corruption event in 2009 led to changes in how donors supported the Zambian health system. Donor funding was withdrawn from the district basket mechanism, originally designed to pool donor and government financing for primary care. The withdrawal of these funds from the pooled financing mechanism raised questions from Government and d...

The international development community is transitioning from the era of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), ending in 2015, to the era of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which have a 2030 target. Global development assistance for health (DAH) increased substantially in the MDGs era, from US $10.8 billion in 2001 to $28.1 billion by...

The slow global response to the Ebola crisis in west Africa suggests that important gaps exist in donor financing for key global functions, such as support for health research and development for diseases of poverty and strengthening of outbreak preparedness. In this Health Policy, we use the International Development Statistics databases to quanti...

In the global health community of donors recipient countries and policy makers there is a strong consensus about the need for greater capacity to produce a better evidence-base for health-system strengthening. However missing clarity on future directions calls for more attention and better analysis in the following areas in health-system strengthen...

Keywords (0.03 MB DOC)

Methodology for Comprehensive, Systematic Review of Current HSS Definitions (0.03 MB DOC)

Conferences Where the Health Sytems Strengthening Guiding Principles Were Discussed and Debated (0.03 MB DOC)

Based upon a review of the literature, Robert Chad Swanson and colleagues present a set of guiding principles for health systems strengthening.

In this study, we analysed stakeholder perceptions of the process of implementing the coordination of health-sector aid in Zambia, Africa. The aim of coordination of health aid is to increase the effectiveness of health systems and to ensure that donors comply with national priorities. With increases in the number of donors involved and resources a...

The increasing resources available for and number of partners providing health sector aid have stimulated innovations, notably, the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness, which aim to improve aid coordination. In this, one of the first studies to analyse implementation of aid coordination below national level, the aim was to investigate the effect...

Zambia introduced a sector-wide approach (SWAp) in the health sector in 1993. The goal was to improve efficiency in the use of domestic funds and externally sourced development assistance by integrating these into a joint sectoral framework. Over a decade into its existence, however, the SWAp remains largely unevaluated. This study explores whether...

The health system in Zambia has traditionally been based on a model of national health services providing care at no or low cost to everyone. The government has been the main provider of health care and in an international comparison in 1998 Zambia stood out as having a comparatively small formal private health care sector compared to other countri...

Background: Several studies have shown that non-governmental health care constitutes a large and important source of health care - not least for the poor and those in hard to reach areas. Yet, the private health care sector in low-income countries remains largely unexplored. This study reports the findings of exit interviews conducted with consumer...

Sector-wide approach, or SWAp, is an increasingly popular approach to development cooperation for many bilateral and multilateral development agencies. While much has been published about the SWAp model itself, there is still limited research conducted on how it is applied in practice. This study aims at showing how the SWAp is translated as it is...

In the past decade the sector-wide approach (SWAp) model has been promoted by donors and adopted by governments in several countries. The purpose of this study is to look at how partners involved in the health SWAp in Bangladesh define ownership and coordination, in their daily work and to analyse the possible implications of these definitions. The...