Activities - African Centre for Global Health & social Transformation

ACHEST has gained recognition as an African institution that is contributing to and playing lead roles in building African rooted and sustainable institutional capacity for analysis and implementation: The areas of focus are:
(i) Human Resources for Health: Education and Training, Retention and Migration;
(ii) Health Systems: Stewardship, Governance, Leadership and Implementation capacity.
As an African civil society organization, ACHEST is a regularly invited participant at the African Union consultations on health and is engaged with the leadership of the AU Commission and the NEPAD Health Secretariat.

ACHEST has convened and hosted meetings and consultations with the African health leaders.

Examples include:
-The Steering Committee of the Sub Saharan African Medical Schools Study,
-The African Health Economics Association,
-The African Health Systems and Stewardship Governance Network.
ACHEST is frequently invited to make presentations at meetings and conferences in Africa and globally.

Human Resources for Health:
MEPI: ACHEST is the African Coordinating Centre for the Medical Education Partnership Initiative (MEPI) 2010-2015. MEPI is funded by PEPFAR and NIH with $130M to increase and improve the quality of Medical graduates in 13 medical schools in 12 African countries. This initiative is now continuing under the leadership of the Principal Investigators Council and has invited other Health Professional groups to establish the African Research and Education in Health (AFREHealth) to be formally launched in August 2016. www.mepinetwork.org…

– Building capacity for accountable medical education: ACHEST co-chaired the Conference Organizing Committee and oversaw the running of the African Medical Education Symposium that took place in Dar es Salaam Tanzania 19 – 21 April 2010. www.samss.org

– Managing Health Worker Migration: In partnership with Realizing Rights and the Global Advisory Policy Council on Health Worker Migration, ACHEST over the last two years coordinated negotiations that have led to the draft Code of Practice on the International Recruitment of Health Workers that will be debated at the next World Health Assembly. www.ministerial-leadership.

– ACHEST cosponsored and convened with Realizing Rights a pre- World Health Assembly conference in Madrid, Spain 10 – 12 May 2010 to facilitate interregional consultation between African health ministers and delegates from other regions ahead of the debate on the draft code on the International Recruitment of Health Workers
– Together with a number of other international Civil Society Organizations, ACHEST co-hosts Side Events during the World Health Assembly.

Brain Drain Brain Gain project funded by EU/WHO: ACHEST has received a three year grant to monitor health worker migration in Uganda and Nigeria; 2015-19.

Supporting Professional Health Councils in Uganda: ACHEST has received a grant from USAID/CARDNO to strengthen the capacity of Professional Health Councils in Uganda.

– Tracking newly qualified doctors in Uganda: The MoH Uganda requested ACHEST to undertake a study to track and establish the location of graduates from the two Public Medical Schools in Uganda who graduated over the past several years.

– Supporting Country Action on the Health Workforce: ACHEST is the secretariat of the African Platform on Human Resources for Health.

Health Systems
• Supporting Ministerial Health Leadership: a strategy for health systems strengthening: The Rockefeller Foundation (RF) commissioned ACHEST as Principal Investigator along with Dr. Jo Ivey Boufford, President of the New York Academy of Medicine (NYAM) to undertake a year-long study of needs and feasibility of developing mechanisms for supporting Ministerial Health Leadership for low and middle income countries. The report of this completed study “Strong Ministries for Strong Health Systems” was released in January 2010 and was launched during the World Health Assembly in Geneva in May 2010. There are a number of follow up activities to the findings and recommendations of the study report: www.strongministries.org

• Health Systems Advocacy Partnership for Africa: ACHEST has received a grant from the Netherlands Government as part of a consortium including; Amref Health Africa, Health Action International (HAI) and WEMOS. The partnership will advocate for Health Systems Strengthening as an approach for achieving Sexual and Reproductive Health Rights in Kenya, Uganda and Zambia including the regional and global component.

• Executive Leadership Development for Ministers and their teams: In partnership with East Central and Southern African Health Community (ECSA) and WHO, ACHEST holds Ministerial Round tables with Health Ministers to discuss topical issues.

• Mapping Health Partner Resource Institutions (HRPIs): As follow up to this Strong Ministries study, ACHEST received a grant from NORAD to map existing institutions in countries, HRPIs, that can be marshaled to work together with health ministries and ensure high visibility of the health agenda in the countries and that capacity for analysis and implementation is created and sustained in five countries in Africa.

• Mapping Regionally active HPRIs: Equinet, an African institution gave ACHEST a grant to map the existing African institutions that are active in health policy and strategy that work regionally in East and Southern Africa.

• Documenting Health Sector Reforms in Uganda: Ministry of Health Uganda requested ACHEST to document the experience with Health Sector Reforms that were undertaken by the country.

• Developing a Health Policy for the Ministry of Defense: In Uganda with a grant from WHO, ACHEST was contracted to support the MoD to develop a military Health Policy for Uganda.

• Evaluating the Health Policy analysis Unit in Uganda: The Alliance for Health Policy and Systems Research at WHO Headquarters contracted ACHEST to carry out an evaluation of the Health Policy Analysis Unit at the Ministry of Health in Uganda as a part of a wider study analyzing Policy Analysis centers in low income countries.

• Senior Advisor to the Ministerial Leadership Initiative for Global Health is a Gates funded project based at Realizing Rights at the Aspen Institute: Washington DC appointed the Executive Director of ACHEST to serve as a Senior Adviser. This work was undertaken in five countries, four in Africa – Ethiopia, Mali, Senegal, Sierra Leone and Nepal in Asia.

• Creating a movement on sustainable African institutional capacity: ACHEST will continue to be an open and inclusive player and will forge partnerships with a wide range of like-minded individuals and institutions in Africa and abroad. Will seek to play the role of advocate and connector. ACHEST will seek partnerships with developed country agencies with similar goals.

• Working Groups and Net Works: In order to promote the two major focus areas of Human Resources for Health and Health systems, ACHEST has established a Working Group on Education and Training and established a Secretariat of the African Health Systems Governance Network (ASHGOVNET).