Health-system reform and universal health coverage in Latin America

Starting in the late 1980s, many Latin American countries began social sector reforms to alleviate poverty, reduce socioeconomic inequalities, improve health outcomes, and provide financial risk protection. In particular, starting in the 1990s, reforms aimed at strengthening health systems to reduce inequalities in health access and outcomes focused on expansion of universal health coverage, especially for poor citizens. In Latin America, health-system reforms have produced a distinct approach to universal health coverage, underpinned by the principles of equity, solidarity, and collective action to overcome social inequalities. In most of the countries studied, government financing enabled the introduction of supply-side interventions to expand insurance coverage for uninsured citizens—with defined and enlarged benefits packages—and to scale up delivery of health services. Countries such as Brazil and Cuba introduced tax-financed universal health systems. These changes were combined with demand-side interventions aimed at alleviating poverty (targeting many social determinants of health) and ...

Providing primary health care through integrated microfinance and health services in Latin America

The simultaneous burdens of communicable and chronic non-communicable diseases cause significant morbidity and mortality in middle-income countries. Integrating health-related services with microfinance has been shown to improve health knowledge, behaviors, and access to appropriate health care. However, limited evidence is available on effects of fully integrating clinical health service delivery alongside microfinance services through large scale and sustained long-term programs, so this study analyze descriptive reports and administrative data for measures related to improving access to primary health services and management of chronic diseases. 

Integrated Care in Latin America, cornerstone of the new reality: Atención Integrada en Iberoamérica piedra angular de la nueva realidad

In this webinar hosted in Spanish, we want to identify and share emerging integrated care practices to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic in Ibero-America, as well as discuss new opportunities in the integration of health services and systems in the future.

Wednesday August 05/Miércoles 05 de Agosto
Hora: 11:00 h (Costa Rica) 12:00 h (Colombia, Mexico), 13:00 h (Bolivia, Chile), 14:00 h (Argentina, Uruguay), 19:00 h (España)

La actual pandemia de COVID-19 ha impactado rápidamente nuestras vidas, particularmente, está creando un desafío sin precedentes para nuestros sistemas de salud y sociales en todo el mundo. En este contexto todos los países están tomando numerosas medidas para responder a las necesidades de atención urgente de las personas afectadas por COVID-19, al mismo tiempo que intentan reducir al máximo el impacto entre los grupos vulnerables.

La Fundación ...

Webinar: Integrated care in Latin America and the Caribbean beyond COVID-19

A reflection on the development of Integrated Health Services Networks in the Americas

In October 2009, the 49^th Directing Council of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) approved the resolution “Integrated Networks of Health Services based on Primary Health Care” (IHSDN). The approval of this resolution formalized the commitment of the countries of the Americas to advance in the creation, development, and strengthening of IHSDNs in the Region, and constitutes until today a cooperation mandate for PAHO.

The resolution was accompanied by an important position paper called “Integrated Health Services Networks. Concepts, policy options and roadmap” published in May 2010. This document provided an action guide to implement the IHSDN, including a new definition of fourteen attributes grouped into four categories (care model, governance and strategy, organization and management, and allocation and incentives) to be met by integrated service networks. The importance of this is that the attributes offered leaders, managers, researchers, and those interested in general in this matter, a clear ...

Building health and care system resilience and recovery

In April 2020, one month after many countries across the world went into lockdown and health and care systems in many countries were dealing with the consequences of the pandemic, the International Foundation for Integrated Care launched a webinar series over five months. We convened integrated care practitioners from across the world to share their immediate experience of coping with this challenge and the effect it was having on care and outcomes.

The International Foundation for Integrated Care are revisiting some of the webinars from the original series in the Autumn 2022. We will be bringing together international panels to explore the experience of integrated care in the context of the pandemic response, what we learnt and are taking forward to build health and care system resilience and recovery in different countries and what still needs to be learnt. We will link this to the Foundation’s 9 pillars of ...