Primary Health Care That Works: The Costa Rican Experience

Long considered a paragon among low- and middle-income countries in its provision of primary health care, Costa Rica reformed its primary health care system in 1994 using a model that, despite its success, has been generally understudied: basic integrated health care teams. This case study provides a detailed description of Costa Rica’s innovative implementation of four critical service delivery reforms and explains how those reforms supported the provision of the four essential functions of primary health care: first-contact access, coordination, continuity, and comprehensiveness. As countries around the world pursue high-quality universal health coverage to attain the Sustainable Development Goals, Costa Rica’s experiences provide valuable lessons about both the types of primary health care reforms needed and potential mechanisms through which these reforms can be successfully implemented.

Primary Health Care: The heart of every health system?

This panel discussion opens our ten-part lunchtime seminar series, “Primary Health Care (PHC): The heart of every health system” that will run once a month throughout the 2022/23 academic year. 

The seminar series provides an overview of the key functions and features of PHC; its potential in achieving universal health coverage and its role in global health. Seminars are led by speakers working in a range of settings.

In this opening zoom-based session our panel of cross-country experts will consider what is stopping PHC from being the heart of every health system??? 

Drawing on their own research and experiences, panellists will discuss the role of primary health care within the health system, why primary health care receives relatively little attention from both policymakers and researchers, despite evidence that health systems with strong primary health care health improve population health outcomes at lower cost and consider what should happen next ...