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 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?”

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.

This learning brief captures LHSS’s experience in supporting municipal-level partners through the contracting process and distills emerging lessons to inspire other municipalities to pursue public-private partnerships as a vehicle for expanding access to urban PHC services.

This brief presents the achievements of two NGOs that received grants to conduct risk communication and community engagement work under the LHSS Project in the Kyrgyz Republic. It examines the grants’ capacity strengthening impact on the two organizations, describes lessons learned, and provides recommendations for donors, implementing partners, and local government partners implementing similar programs.

This two-pager focuses on USAID’s Learning Question 1, “What are the contributions of systems thinking approaches and tools to changes in health system outcomes? How do systems thinking approaches affect health system outcomes?”

This two-pager focuses on USAID’s Learning Question 5, “What are effective and sustainable mechanisms or processes that enable the participation of private sector, civil society, and public organizations in developing locally-led solutions to improve high-performing health care, especially for poor and vulnerable populations? What enables the effective participation or leadership of marginalized populations themselves in the development and implementation of these solutions? Under what conditions is this participation different?”

This two-pager focuses on USAID’s Learning Question 2, “What conditions or factors successfully facilitate the institutionalization and/or implementation at scale of good practices that improve health system outcomes, and why? What are lessons learned regarding planning for sustainability and achieving results at scale?”

This brief explores ways in which digital tools and systems can be used successfully and responsibly to advance SBC interventions in support of health system strengthening, and provides recommendations for future programming and areas of research.

This Practice Spotlight brief describes outcome harvesting, a monitoring, evaluation, research, and learning approach that can help tease out the specific impacts of HSS interventions conducted in complex environments, where many factors may influence an outcome.

This Practice Spotlight brief describes contribution analysis, a monitoring, evaluation, research, and learning approach well-suited for examining the effects of HSS interventions conducted in complex environments, where the causes of change are multifaceted and difficult to trace.

USAID launched the Inclusive Health Access Prize (IHAP) to recognize five private innovators working to improve the accountability, affordability, accessibility, and reliability of health care for poor and vulnerable populations. This brief captures lessons on supporting innovative health businesses.