Accelerating Progress towards the Health Millennium Development Goals and other Health Outcomes

In too many low and middle income countries, children and women continue to suffer and die from preventable causes. The technology and basic knowledge to avert over 60 percent of current child deaths and over 70 percent of maternal deaths already exists. Having this knowledge, however, is clearly, not enough.

Turn this knowledge into practice by taking the "Accelerating Progress towards the Health MDGs and other Health Outcomes,” a two-week course designed to address the capacity needs of World Bank client countries working to achieving health outcomes, such as those posed by the MGD agenda. A clear outcome agenda looks beyond the traditional answers in the health sector and, importantly, includes critical work on the role of households in producing good health, and focuses on the role of critical sectors outside health, such as water, sanitation, roads, and education, among others.

This two-week course targets key actors involved in achieving health outcomes. It provides state of the art knowledge on what works at the household level, as well as what works inside and outside the health sector. Putting knowledge into practice requires a look at the bottlenecks that limit, or even prevent, implementation effectiveness. These bottlenecks are studied at the household level, at the community level, within the health sector itself, as well as through a multi-sector lens. After focusing on outcomes, sharing of knowledge on what works, and analyzing bottlenecks, the course then shifts its emphasis to the roles of the public and non-public sector, and on the instruments and tools available within the international health community.

The course will share tools and knowledge of reforms, the role of government, essential public health functions and new finance modalities in order to empower participants to become effective agents of change. In addition to lectures, the course uses case based learning techniques to help participants design and implement programs that put this knowledge to use. It employs adult learning techniques, such as interactive group work, debate and action learning.