One of the products of the SPEED initiative that is expected to shape the understanding and thinking forward for Universal Health Coverage in Uganda, is a book looking back at various components of health in Uganda and how it has been managed. The idea is to examine these various components and provide lessons learnt, good practices and strategies that can be scaled for Universal Health Coverage implementation.
Preparatory work on the book started way back in the first year of the SPEED initiative. Along the way, several writing workshops have been held for teams to thrash out and agree on the content of their respective chapters.
While the initial meetings have been more focused on the structure of the book and the chapters, the July 26th – 29th writing retreat was more focused on populating the chapters with content and finalising the chapters for teams that have been working harder. There were several specific team efforts as well as plenary sharing of progress.
The SPEED Director, Associate Professor Freddie Ssengooba thanked the teams for the commitment shown in tackling the assignment. He therefore urged all to work even harder to ensure that the final product is delivered on time as promised to the funder, partners and UHC stakeholders.
The Health Financing team with the leadership of Dr. Sebastian Baine (middle) busy at work. Right is Tonny Odokonyero of EPRC and left is Chrispus Mayora of MakSPH
SPEED is the acronym for “Supporting Policy Engagement for Evidence-based Decisions” for Universal Health Coverage in Uganda. EuropeAid is funding the SPEED project in Uganda under the Support to Public Health Institute Program (EuropeAid/1351/C/ACT/Multi).
With funding to a tune of about 3.2 million Euros from the EU and close to 800,000 Euros to be contributed by partners, SPEED aims to strengthen capacity of policy analysis, advice and influence at Makerere University School of Public Health and Partner institutions and contribute to accelerating progress towards UHC and health systems resilience in Uganda.
SPEED is a strategic partnership of four Ugandan and two international institutions. In Uganda, the partner institutions are 1) Makerere University School of Public Health, 2) National Planning Authority, 3) Economic Policy Research Center and 4) Uganda National Health Consumers Organization. The international partners are the Institute of Tropical Medicine, Antwerp, Belgium and Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) from South Africa. The project which is being implemented for the period of 5 years aims at boosting policy analysis and influence that supports universal health coverage and health system resilience in Uganda by way of five main activity clusters – 1) strengthening resources and expertise for policy analysis; 2) knowledge generation, 3) stakeholder identification and engagements; 4) support for policy development and 5) monitoring selected policy implementation arrangements.
