What Works for Health Systems Strengthening: An Overview of the Evidence – Resource Toolkit

This resource toolkit has been produced by K4D in partnership with the Health Systems Team in the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) Human Development Department and renowned global health systems expert Prof. Sophie Witter (Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh). The toolkit is aimed at FCDO’s network of health advisors, and policy and programme managers based in country offices and central teams. The purpose of this toolkit is to summarise and present key messages from the latest evidence on ‘what works’ for health systems strengthening (HSS) to help embed a stronger HSS approach into all of our work on health as outlined in FCDO’s position paper Health Systems Strengthening for Global Health Security and Universal Health Coverage (FCDO 2021). The toolkit draws extensively on more detailed pieces of work analysing the evidence in more depth, which were disseminated through the health network in FCDO (and previously the Department for International Development) between 2019 and 2022 titled Evidence Review of What Works for Health Systems Strengthening, Where and When? (Witter et al. 2021). This toolkit also links back to a multitude of resources and recorded sessions collected as part of K4Ds previous learning journey on HSS.

Accompanying and supporting this guide is an illustration that explores what works for health systems strengthening. It summarises key elements and processes that can be used by programmes.