Health Systems Strengthening

URC’s work strengthens the performance and interconnectedness of the six health system building blocks identified by the World Health Organization: service delivery, health workforce, strategic information, commodities, health financing, and leadership and governance. We provide high-quality technical assistance that focuses on national priorities and maximizes the effectiveness of a country’s resources.

URC's health systems strengthening work emphasizes a systematic, evidence-based approach designed to bring about significant improvement in:

• Patient and population health outcomes, particularly among the poor
• Efficiency and effectiveness of systems and processes of care
• Social responsiveness and accountability

Through continuous quality improvement and innovation and close, supportive relationships with a country’s Ministry of Health, we build institutional, programmatic, and financial capacities for a high-performing health sector that adapts to changing situations. We also design context-specific health communication and behavior change strategies to bolster our systems strengthening work at the individual, family, and community levels.

Supporting our health systems strengthening approach, we use evidence-based approaches to improve health worker performance and engagement and employ our global One Health strategy to expand interdisciplinary collaboration for all aspects of health care.

One growing area for capacity building is mobile technology. URC is applying mHealth technology to strengthen service delivery and supervision systems—enabling real-time communication among health care providers, tools for decision-support, and streamlined referrals and recordkeeping.