Health systems research

Improving quality of care in low-income countries

The discussion on the state and development of the routine quality of care delivered by health facilities in the Nouna health district, in Burkina Faso, has been both a policy and a research issue for the past 20 years (20 years of research on quality).

Quality of care has been a constant concern and it has given intensive focus on research and the interventions deriving from this research.

It’s an extremely difficult problem to tackle and is resistant to simple uni-dimensional solutions such as pouring inputs on equipment into health service. While it is obvious that an essential level of facilities, infrastructure, equipment and consumables is a necessity, it is not a sufficient condition for improving the quality of care. The challenge is to find out new strategies to change the institutional framework and the incentives under which health workers operate to bridge the gap which often separates the health care provider from the communities they serve.

In this way the MAMOP project has been developed with focus on intervention that would improve home management, link the home to the facility and improve the management in health facilities.

Improving the management of childhood malaria: an experiment to bridge the gap between mothers and health providers

The provision of appropriate reproductive health care remains one of the major health care challenges in developing countries. The development of reproductive health service delivery is continually confronted by challenges from a changing environment an important element of which is health sector reform, particularly decentralisation, being undertaken by most governments in Africa. The general objective of this research is to make health sector decentralisation more effective in the development of appropriate reproductive health services.

Understanding the impact of decentralization on reproductive health services in Africa

Ensuring the patients become recognized partners in the “health care team” is vital in delivering health care. Patient empowerment is a fundamental contributor to patient satisfaction, but also impacts quality through its effects on compliance and self-management. To develop policies to improve empowerment in the general community, however, we need to better understand what empowerment is and how one might measure it.

Svelta Loukanova is finishing her PhD. She has worked on this topic: Identifying the role of empowered patients in health care management.

Assessment of the quality of primary care services may be enhanced by including patient perceptions and satisfaction but although by professional judgment of quality. Human resources, and particularly their motivation, are a central issue. A new intervention study is in progress on process on health staff motivation and its impact on maternal health services quality.

Human factors for quality improvement of pre-natal and maternal health services

Well functioning health information systems are considered to be indispensable for the efficient use of scarce resources to improve quality of care and for transparent decision making process. Jaakko Yrjö-Koskinen is currently doing research on the cultural barriers to information use in decision making in Burkina Faso. It’s a part of his studies for the doctoral degree.