Health Systems Strengthening Accelerator

COVID-19 update: Due to its flexible nature, pre-existing infrastructure and remote facilitation approaches, the Accelerator can provide COVID19 support in a range of areas. In Ghana, the Accelerator is providing critical support to the Office of the Presidential Coordinator on COVID-19. This includes advising on staffing structure and facilitating an advisory group tasked with monitoring the socioeconomic impact of the outbreak. It also involves identifying helpful evidence, ideas and experts from around the world — including leaders from Singapore and South Korea — which we help to contextualize get into practice in Ghana. Health officials who are interested in learning more should reach out to their local USAID missions.

Fact Sheet
Accelerating progress toward strong, self-sustaining health systems is possible
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The Challenge

Over the past few decades, countries and development partners have greatly improved the health and well-being of people in many places across the globe. This progress has been possible in part because of successful investments that have enhanced countries’ health systems performance.

While these advances are promising, progress toward strong, self-sustaining health systems remains too slow, and people in many areas are being left behind. Without evolving beyond development models that rely on outside foreign expertise and do not effectively engage local stakeholders, leaders will struggle to achieve and sustain additional health system improvements quickly enough to reach the global goal of ensuring healthy lives and promoting well-being for all.

To expedite progress, countries and their development partners need new approaches that will enable them to build stronger, more sustainable health systems faster.

The Opportunity

Expediting progress toward self-sustaining, strong health systems is possible. To achieve this, countries and development partners must meet complex, systemic challenges with dynamic and innovative solutions that are adapted to meet countries’ needs and evolve over time. They must also develop new partnership models, in which technical institutions and experts at regional and country levels in Africa and Asia play a lead role in driving health system innovation and improvement.

Our Work

A five-year initiative funded by USAID and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Accelerator increases people’s access to high performing health systems by supporting countries as they co-create, innovate and adapt, in order to build more effective and sustainable health system interventions on their journeys to self-reliance.

The Accelerator facilitates work with key actors from across sectors – government officials, community leaders and local and regional technical organizations – to advance their understanding of the most pressing systemic issues, identify their root causes and draw from global and regional experience to co-create innovative solutions that suit the local context. The program’s approach is focused on supporting local partners as they lead implementation and find their own pathways to meaningful and lasting health systems change. The Accelerator is currently partnering with USAID Missions, country leaders and local and regional partners in Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Guinea, Liberia and Togo as well as USAIDs Asia Bureau and Bureau for Democracy, Conflict, and Humanitarian Assistance. Together, we will prioritize systems-level barriers, understand entry points for change, and apply integrated systems improvement approaches.

The Accelerator will document and share lessons about how to do HSS better and amplify the stories of the change agents who are leading the way. R4D leads the program with support from Health Strategy and Delivery Foundation (HSDF, headquartered in Nigeria), and ICF. Additional global, regional, and local partners will be selected in partnership with USAID/OHS and USAID Missions based on demand.

Learn more about where the Accelerator is working around the globe.

Accelerator Website