Strengthening Public Health Systems : Policy Ideas from a Governance Perspective
Public health systems that are capable of disease surveillance and action to prevent and manage outbreaks require trustworthy community-embedded public health workers who are empowered to undertake their tasks as professionals. Economic theory on i...
| Main Authors: | , , |
|---|---|
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2020
|
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/265361587665344677/Strengthening-Public-Health-Systems-Policy-Ideas-from-a-Governance-Perspective http://hdl.handle.net/10986/33663 |
| Summary: | Public health systems that are capable
of disease surveillance and action to prevent and manage
outbreaks require trustworthy community-embedded public
health workers who are empowered to undertake their tasks as
professionals. Economic theory on incentives and norms of
agents tasked with performing activities that society cares
about yield direct implications for how to recruit and
manage frontline health workers to promote trustworthiness
and professionalism. This paper provides novel evidence from
a survey of public health workers in Bihar, India's
poorest state, that supports the insights of economic theory
and taken together yields ideas that can immediately be put
to work in policy responses to the COVID-19 crisis. These
ideas address problems of governance and trust that have
bedeviled health policymakers. Managing the current and
preventing future pandemics requires going beyond technical
health policies to the political institutions that shape
incentives and norms of health workers tasked with
implementing those policies. |
|---|