- Strategic policy engagements: WHO facilitates policy dialogue and engagements at national and regional levels to develop health financing policy and strategies to tackle the key drivers of financial hardship, and provides guidance in health prioritization to improve efficiency and equity. This includes facilitating policy dialogue between health ministries and other ministries, such as finance and planning.
- Evidence generation: WHO gathers quantitative and qualitative information sources to generate regional evidence to monitor the status of health financing and progress in financial protection in the Region. WHO also uses this to develop policy options and recommendations for resource mobilization, financial protection mechanisms, strategic purchasing, benefit design and public finance management. WHO also provides expertise to countries to generate national and subnational information on health financing and financial protection and inform national level decision making.
- Targeted country support: WHO provides targeted technical assistance and expertise based on need and demand to countries on developing policy and legislative options on the core functions of health financing, addressing implementation challenges and initiating new reforms. This includes efforts to mobilise resources for health from traditional and new sources, strengthening resource pooling and addressing bottlenecks in purchasing of health services. It also includes support for better utilization of current funds through improved public financial management.
- Capacity-building: WHO focuses on building capacity of national authorities for health financing across policy concepts and practice, economic analyses for monitoring and evidence generation to inform budget negotiations, resource allocation decisions, and business cases for investing in health and social protection. WHO also builds institutional capacity in countries and regional entities for policy dialogue and advocacy, evidence generation and purchasing of health services.
- Collaboration and partnership: WHO facilitates internal collaboration among technical teams to ensure synergies and internal coherence in policy advice and technical support provided to countries. In line with the Paris declaration and, more recently, the Lusaka Agenda, WHO works in partnership with other stakeholders for joint technical support to countries, and to leverage additional financing. This also ensures that financing for health is responsive to the national priorities and plans related to health system inputs, service organisation and service coverage targets.