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.

This brief introduces the social determinants of health (SDOH) concept and terminology, and discusses approaches to addressing SDOH. Understanding these root causes of health inequities and their impact on health care access, quality, and equity is crucial to strengthening health systems.

LHSS partnered with colleagues working as part of the USAID MTaPS project to document a practical approach that countries can use to track pharmaceutical expenditure (PE) using the System of Health Accounts (SHA) 2011 framework. This resource contributes to efforts by the World Health Organization to develop global guidance on tracking of PE.

LHSS conducted a study of 37 countries to provide a better understanding of the strengths, opportunities, and gaps in the structures governing the provision of quality health services.

This report details case studies from Rwanda and Zambia which offer unique insights into the operationalization of National Quality Policies and Strategy (NQPS) within broader governance and quality of care reforms.

This brief focuses on how pooling arrangements—the way countries combine funding from different sources to spread the financial risk of needing to pay for health services—can be improved to accelerate progress toward UHC.

This brief includes a global evidence review of DFS for health conducted by LHSS and an analysis of two programmatic case studies of DFS for health by Management Sciences for Health (MSH) through the Digital Square initiative.

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.

This learning brief can be used as a resource for HRH managers, planners, program managers, and frontline practitioners to learn how other countries are approaching and successfully designing and implementing solutions to their HRH challenges. It can also be used as a reference for health policy makers, funders, and implementing partners to inform the design and implementation of HRH resource optimization initiatives covered in this brief.

This Catalog allows practitioners to consider which interventions have more robust evidence bases to support their practical application, such as: enhancing worker and supervisor competencies through training, offering nonfinancial incentives for high performers, practicing task sharing to promote cost savings, implementing digital solutions to expand access to services, and reducing costs of procuring and distributing pharmaceutical products.

This learning resource presents key learning from the activity literature review, learning exchange meetings, and TA workshops. This resource focuses particularly on stakeholder engagement and institutionalizing stronger links between national health priorities, sector plans and national budgets, which learning partners identified as their most pressing issues.

This report synthesizes learning from an in-depth examination of successful MOH efforts that have led to increased health budget execution. It offers a vision of good health budget execution, as well as promising practices in the areas of budget structure and processes and budget accountability.

The case study in Senegal focused on practical experiences and lessons learned when expanding financial protection to socially excluded and vulnerable groups.

The case study shows the literature and previous work on health equity to identify promising approaches and strategies from Senegal’s experience to ensure more equitable financial protection, particularly for underserved and socially excluded populations.

This report provides results and lessons learned from the LHSS Project’s review of existing literature on expanding financial protection to underserved and socially excluded populations in LMICs.