The WHO Building Blocks of Health Systems are Service Delivery, Human Resources for health, Health information systems, Access to essential medicines, Health Financing, and Leadership and governance (World Health Organization, 2010).
Service delivery comprises of the outputs of the resources that are invested into the heath system to ensure that is can work well, these resources include human resources, health financing, essential medicines, health information system, and leadership and governance (Ferrinho et al., 2023). Theoretically if there is an increase in the resources invested into the heath system, in the context of adequately implemented policies and strategies by leadership and governance, the health system should offer high-quality services and increased equitable access. The service delivery building block measures the quality and the access to healthcare services that communities have (Ferrinho et al., 2023).
Human resources for health are the people responsible for delivering responsive, effective and equitable healthcare services to patients with the resources are available to them (Manyazewal, 2017). These resources are the health information system medicines, financing, good leadership and infrastructure. According to Manyazewal (2017) Health information systems are responsible for “the production, analysis, dissemination and use of reliable and timely information on health determinants, health system performance and health status.” Access to essential medicines, according to Ferrinho et al. (2023), “refers to equitable access to essential pharmaceutical products, vaccines and technologies of assured quality, safety, efficacy and cost-effectiveness, and their scientifically sound and cost-effective use.” These building blocks reveal the standard health systems should aim for these components in order to be high-quality and ensure equitable access.
Health Financing is a building block focused on the money that is needed to operate a high-quality and adequate health system. Sufficient financing is need for the purchase of essential medication, maintenance, and development of infrastructure, and to provide financial incentive to the health workforce and leadership and governance to maintain the health system (Ferrinho et al., 2023). In my reflection from HSS 1 I explain that Health finances are raised by health financing systems. A good health financing system raises adequate funds for health, that ensure people can use the needed services and are protected from financial catastrophe or impoverishment associated with having to pay for them. The health financing system has three functions collecting money, pooling money, and providing services.
Leadership and governance comprises of setting up policies and strategies and ensuring effective implementation and management of policies and strategies. It entails partnering with various stakeholders, supervision, regular evaluation of the health system, and accountability (Ferrinho et al., 2023). Ferrinho et al. (2023) further describes leadership and governance as “Accountability is an intrinsic aspect of governance that concerns the management of relationships between various stakeholders, including individuals, households, communities, professional organizations, firms, governments, nongovernmental organizations, private firms, and other entities that have the responsibility to finance, monitor, deliver or use health services.”
There are two reasons that I believe being knowledgeable of the WHO Building Blocks of Health is relevant to my learning:
Provides the vocabulary to identify and communicate health system issues:
The World Health Organization (WHO) has developed a framework that describes health systems in terms of six core components or “building blocks.” These building blocks provide a common vocabulary to identify and communicate health system issues. This is advantageous when problem-solving issues that are identified in and health system. For example, if the same vocabulary is used to describe the health system in South Africa and Kenya it will be easier for people in leadership and governance to adopt similar policies and strategies by learning from Kenya.
Public health:
The HIS collecting information on health and social determinants links to the work that was done in Public Health. Public Health addresses the health needs by identifying the social determinants in a community, which are identified through a process called a community diagnosis and thereafter addressed with interventions. According to Alberdi-Erice, Martinez and Rayón-Valpuesta (2021) “a community diagnosis is necessary to provide a detailed description of the community as well as an evaluation of the community’s health, including the main factors responsible for it and the needs felt by the population.” The health workers in health system play an important part in ensuring that the correct interventions are put in place by the relevant partners and the government. The information they input into the health information system must be reliable, useable, authoritative, understandable, and comparative because it makes a significant contribution to the community diagnosis. Addressing Medicine Stock-outs which is a problem in some parts in South Africa can also be linked to public health, the interventions that follow community diagnosis. If a disease keeps increasing in a community, then the community noticeably need more health resources related to the disease to tackle the problem.