The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) recently awarded Jhpiego a $20 million contract for the Strategic Technical Assistance for Improved Health System Performance and Health Outcomes Activity (STAIP) project in Liberia. ThinkWell is a member of Jhpiego’s project consortium.
The four-year project has three main objectives:
- Strengthen the management capacity of county health teams and select Ministry of Health units to drive health system performance improvement
- Strengthen the quality of reproductive, maternal, newborn, child and adolescent health, and malaria primary health care services for improved health outcomes
- Increase financial risk protection and ensure the health sector is better financed
ThinkWell will lead activities under objective three, which includes improving health financing through strengthening performance-based financing. We will also support the design and implementation of the Liberia Health Equity Fund to increase financial risk protection.
Ultimately, STAIP will help to strengthen the Ministry of Health’s systems to improve patient outcomes across primary health care facilities. In collaboration with local partners, the consortium will achieve this by sustainably building local capacity and using performance-based financing methods to incentivize better health systems performance.
During the project, ThinkWell will build on our previous work where we analyzed Liberia’s political economy and financing structure for health care. Based on our assessment, we provided health insurance design options to the government to strengthen sustainable financing mechanisms for health services.