Swiss TPH

The challenges of meeting population health goals in the poorest countries remain formidable.  Most notably, despite increased financial resources, effective coverage of essential health services is increasing too slowly largely due to weaknesses and growing fragmentation in health systems.  Highly cost-effective interventions are still under used and health inequities are widening. The Health Systems Unit extends the strong tradition of Swiss TPH in innovating, developing and validating technical health interventions into a new thrust on optimizing health systems for better delivery of such interventions at adequate levels of effective and equitable (universal) coverage.   Health system weaknesses pose obstacles in areas ranging from stewardship of policies and strategies, through logistics, input management and service delivery, to public knowledge, behaviour, uptake and adherence.  Understanding these complex system behaviours and weaknesses, and intervening at the system level calls for applied, integrated, trans-disciplinary research from a “systems thinking” perspective, synergistically addressing the major sub-systems of the health system: governance; financing; human resources; informatics; technologies; and service delivery.  The Unit’s projects are built around extended internal and external networks and partnerships of the Swiss TPH, harnessing and building skills in health policy analysis, health systems analysis and health systems dynamic modeling.