The World Bank, USAID and the Global Financing Facility (GFF), will host the 7th Annual Health Financing Forum (AHFF7) on April 15 to 17, 2024, on the sidelines of the 2024 World Bank/IMF spring meetings.

This brief describes opportunities to improve financial protection programs using behavior change approaches. The Practice Spotlights Social and Behavior Change series supports USAID’s Vision for Health System Strengthening 2030 by exploring how social and behavior change approaches can contribute to countries’ health system strengthening efforts.

Religious leaders and community health workers collaborated to promote COVID-19 vaccination in two regions of Tajikistan.

With support from USAID’s LHSS Project, the Ministry of Health and Social Protection of the Population (MOHSPP) in Tajikistan strengthened Tajikistan’s national laboratory system and supported the country’s COVID-19 Country Preparedness and Response Plan.

This two-pager focuses on USAID’s Learning Question 6, "What are key behavioral outcomes that indicate a functioning, integrated health system? In what ways can integrated health system strengthening approaches explicitly include social and behavior change?"

This two-pager focuses on USAID’s Learning Question 4, “What are effective and sustainable mechanisms or processes to integrate local, community, sub-national, national, and regional voices, priorities, and contributions into USAID’s health system strengthening efforts?”

The assessment findings inform the MoHSPP and its international partners on interventions to improve the quality of vaccination services, not only for COVID-19 but beyond. This ultimately leads to increased access to improved services in Tajikistan.

The video provides evidence-based information about COVID-19 vaccination to decrease vaccine hesitancy among women. It discusses the importance and benefits of vaccination for women and their families.

The video includes an explanation of the importance of COVID-19 boosters by the United States-based expert Dr. Arash Alaei. Dr. Alaei is a general physician who had been a consultant for the World Health Organization and the Tajikistan Ministry of Health and Social Protection of Population during the COVID-19 pandemic.

This video portrays the experience of a family in which a daughter was dealing with vaccine side effects. It provides guidance on how to react to possible side effects and what to do to recover from them.

The video explains immunity and illustrates why maintaining healthy lifestyles is important.

The video includes evidence-based information about vaccination against COVID-19 and the importance of booster shots for women, youth, older adults, and people with disabilities.

LHSS along with speakers from USAID and WHO reflected on strategies to ensure reliable funding for costing the planning, design, implementation, and evaluation of a National Quality Policy and Strategy (NQPS).

This brief highlights the recent shifts in health systems practice toward more explicitly incorporating an SBC lens in social accountability activities that aim to improve overall health system performance and address inequities. The brief synthesizes the growing body of evidence on the role social accountability plays in increasing accessibility to better-quality health care services and uses case studies and lessons learned to highlight how SBC approaches can be more explicitly integrated into this aspect of HSS programming.

This brief builds on the USAID Local Health System Sustainability Project (LHSS) Strengthening Governance report (2022) and global National Quality Policy and Strategy (NQPS) survey, aiming to provide practical examples and considerations for country practitioners to consider on their quality journeys. It includes case studies of three countries that have used NQPS to mobilize and align resources for quality.