Exploring challenges in health transition planning

Effective health planning is critical in ensuring affordable, accessible, and high quality health services for all. Many low- and middle-income countries rely on donor funding to establish or maintain the basic healthcare services, and often struggle to ensure sustainability of these when sources of funding in the sector change.

Multilateral organisations and government partners have in the past often focused on singular priority areas, such as eradicating specific diseases, providing vaccinations, or enabling HIV/AIDS treatments. However, as achieving universal health coverage became a global priority, ensuring all healthcare services are available and supported is crucial.

For many countries, this means focusing on ensuring the efficiency of the healthcare system is first continued, and later improved. As sources of funding shift, a managed transition is essential for keeping all services supported.

Tomas Lievens, principal consultant in the Oxford Policy Management Health team, explores the role of transition planning in managing the change in health expenditure performance, and highlights the importance of context specific diagnostics and solutions for ensuring the success of these reforms.

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