Whole System Change in South Africa: Understanding the experience of health system transformation in the Western Cape province (WholeSyst-SA)
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Cape Town
Department Name: Health Sciences Faculty
Abstract
Twenty years after the ending of apartheid the time is ripe to evaluate South African experience of health system transformation. Much was promised and many changes have been introduced - but how much has been achieved, especially for the most vulnerable and previously disadvantaged groups? What factors have enabled or constrained change across the public health system, nationally recognised as the leading edge of efforts to improve the health and well-being of vulnerable groups? What lessons does past experience hold for continuing efforts to improve health care and health? What issues need to be tracked over time to generate the evidence needed to support future policy and managerial decision-making?
This proposed grant intends to address these questions. It is jointly submitted by a team of public health system policy-makers/managers and researchers based in the Western Cape (WC) province. As South Africa is a quasi-federal state, the WC provincial government has the constitutional responsibility for ensuring an effective health system for its population. It also has a reputation for having been relatively effective in sustaining implementation of such change over the last 20 years. Examining the particular experience of one province, in comparison with wider national experience, will allow in-depth investigation of South African health system transformation. The project will consider not only what changes have been implemented, with what achievements and challenges, but also what set of political, leadership, organisational and other factors have supported or limited the implementation of change. From this analysis it will seek to identify the pathways to change underpinning health system development in the province. The project team's combination of experience and expertise will support this in-depth investigation.
Better understanding of what the province has achieved and how, set against the national context, will offer insights of relevance across the country, as well as internationally. It will also, more specifically, contribute to generating the evidence base needed to support future policy and management decision-making, by supporting provincial health system monitoring and evaluation activities and identifying related, larger scale research needs.
This proposed grant intends to address these questions. It is jointly submitted by a team of public health system policy-makers/managers and researchers based in the Western Cape (WC) province. As South Africa is a quasi-federal state, the WC provincial government has the constitutional responsibility for ensuring an effective health system for its population. It also has a reputation for having been relatively effective in sustaining implementation of such change over the last 20 years. Examining the particular experience of one province, in comparison with wider national experience, will allow in-depth investigation of South African health system transformation. The project will consider not only what changes have been implemented, with what achievements and challenges, but also what set of political, leadership, organisational and other factors have supported or limited the implementation of change. From this analysis it will seek to identify the pathways to change underpinning health system development in the province. The project team's combination of experience and expertise will support this in-depth investigation.
Better understanding of what the province has achieved and how, set against the national context, will offer insights of relevance across the country, as well as internationally. It will also, more specifically, contribute to generating the evidence base needed to support future policy and management decision-making, by supporting provincial health system monitoring and evaluation activities and identifying related, larger scale research needs.
Technical Summary
Over the last twenty years South Africa has implemented a broad array of changes within its health system in order to improve its ability to offer good quality health care at reasonable cost to vulnerable population groups. Whilst there is national recognition that performance improvements have fallen short of expectations, the Western Cape province is reputed to have performed relatively well. The proposed exploratory and formative research will examine this province's experience since 1994, comparing it with wider national experience and considering the lessons for future monitoring and evaluation of health system development, including related research needs. The project's objectives will be addressed through a sequenced set of data collection activities, comprising review of existing policy documents and research reports, elite interviews with policy-makers, and analysis of routinely collected health system data for the Western Cape and other provinces. The Western Cape experience will be set against wider national experience, including specific comparison with two other provinces which will be purposefully selected to allow reflection on insights generated by initial analysis of the Western Cape experience. The project will be guided and supported by a steering committee comprised of policy-makers, managers and researchers, who will together tease out wider lessons - including those concerning future provincial monitoring and evaluation activities. The project, therefore, is itself an example of the embedded research identified as important for health policy and systems research.
Planned Impact
This research will have positive social impact by contributing to health system performance improvements that preferentially benefit previously dis-advantaged and vulnerable population groups in South Africa. By better understanding the whole system change necessary to enable such performance improvements the project will offer lessons and guidance for policy-makers and managers across South Africa, and in other countries. By supporting the development of WC provincial monitoring and evaluation activities focussed on future health system change efforts, the project will also support the generation of evidence to inform managerial decision-making and sustain whole system change over time. Improved decision-making will, in turn, assist the South African provincial and national health departments to establish a person-centred health system - and perhaps more quickly and efficiently than without such evidence. The WC monitoring and evaluation experience will also generate lessons of relevance to other provinces.
Additional South African beneficiaries of the research - who will mediate its impact on the ultimate beneficiaries - are the health system managers seeking to sustain health system transformation in the Western Cape and other provinces. The involvement of senior Western Cape provincial health department officials in the project team is a clear indication of demand for this research and of their intention to use the study's findings. The planned use of the study's finding to support future provincial monitoring and evaluation activities is in response to an explicit request to academic partners from the provincial health department, and will support the sustained influence of the findings in future decision-making. Nationally, there is also a demand for evidence on how to strengthen the health system, as shown by the priorities identified in the 2011 National Health Research Summit (Mayosi et al. 2011) and the national department of health's support for eleven pilot sites in which to test and learn from new health system strengthening approaches. The 2011 National Evaluation Policy Framework, moreover, demonstrates a strong government-wide interest in policy evaluation work (The Presidency, 2011).
The benefits of the research will, finally, extend outside South Africa. The study will generate insights about what whole system change entails and how to support it. These insights will not be transferable to other settings as instrumental 'policy lessons', but can act to stimulate managers in other settings to consider, for example, the broad array of health system changes needed to support sustained performance improvements benefiting vulnerable populations and the political and organisational strategies that might sustain such changes. Adapting insights from South Africa to their own contexts is a critical managerial act of lesson-drawing (Rose 1993). The international relevance of such insights lies, moreover, in the recognition that health systems are able to influence the distribution of health across population groups (CSDH 2008), but weak health systems hinder the deliver of health services and waste resources (Fernandes et al. 2014; WHO 2007).
Additional South African beneficiaries of the research - who will mediate its impact on the ultimate beneficiaries - are the health system managers seeking to sustain health system transformation in the Western Cape and other provinces. The involvement of senior Western Cape provincial health department officials in the project team is a clear indication of demand for this research and of their intention to use the study's findings. The planned use of the study's finding to support future provincial monitoring and evaluation activities is in response to an explicit request to academic partners from the provincial health department, and will support the sustained influence of the findings in future decision-making. Nationally, there is also a demand for evidence on how to strengthen the health system, as shown by the priorities identified in the 2011 National Health Research Summit (Mayosi et al. 2011) and the national department of health's support for eleven pilot sites in which to test and learn from new health system strengthening approaches. The 2011 National Evaluation Policy Framework, moreover, demonstrates a strong government-wide interest in policy evaluation work (The Presidency, 2011).
The benefits of the research will, finally, extend outside South Africa. The study will generate insights about what whole system change entails and how to support it. These insights will not be transferable to other settings as instrumental 'policy lessons', but can act to stimulate managers in other settings to consider, for example, the broad array of health system changes needed to support sustained performance improvements benefiting vulnerable populations and the political and organisational strategies that might sustain such changes. Adapting insights from South Africa to their own contexts is a critical managerial act of lesson-drawing (Rose 1993). The international relevance of such insights lies, moreover, in the recognition that health systems are able to influence the distribution of health across population groups (CSDH 2008), but weak health systems hinder the deliver of health services and waste resources (Fernandes et al. 2014; WHO 2007).
Organisations
- University of Cape Town (Lead Research Organisation)
- Government of Catalonia (Collaboration)
- UNIVERSITY OF THE WESTERN CAPE (Collaboration)
- Western Cape Government (Collaboration, Project Partner)
- Western Cape Department of Health (Collaboration)
- South African Medical Research Council (Project Partner)
- Stellenbosch University (Project Partner)
- Health Systems Trust (Project Partner)
Publications
Gilson, Lucy
(2017)
Development of the Health System in the Western Cape: Experiences since 1994
in South African Health Review
Mohamed H
(2020)
District Health Barometer 2019/2020
Brady L
(2017)
Governance Think Tank Summary Document
Whole Syst Project Team
(2017)
Re-thinking Monitoring and Evaluation
Whole Syst Project Team
(2017)
Whole Syst Communications Strategy
Title | Documentary Film |
Description | Short documentary film 'Red Zone Paramedics' produced to document the experiences of paramedics working in areas experiencing high levels of violence. The documentary explores themes of everyday resilience in the health system. |
Type Of Art | Film/Video/Animation |
Year Produced | 2017 |
Impact | The film is being used by the Department of health to facilitate sessions of community engagement with the goal of collectively finding solutions to reducing violence in the community. It is also being used as part of an organisational development intervention to open up spaces of dialogue and critical reflection seeking to build resilience in the Department of Health. |
Title | Research Dissemination Animation |
Description | Based on a series of ideas and inputs from the research team - the Department of Health Communication department intends to develop an an animation to disseminate findings across the Department. |
Type Of Art | Film/Video/Animation |
Year Produced | 2017 |
Impact | This will be a powerful way to share research findings across the Department and encourage processes of organisational learning. |
Description | The study findings demonstrate how the Western Cape province has transformed its public health services from being fragmented, inequitable and inefficient into a coherent, organised and well managed health system over a 20 year period. Critical to this transformation have been clear and sustained overall visions and policy frameworks, clear separation of political and administrative leadership, stable and consistent central administrative leadership and efforts to spread leadership across the health system, prudent financial management, and the development of strong public health technical capacity and the use of evidence in decision-making. These findings confirm the need for a whole-systems approach to health system development - which works system-wide (across all functions), system-deep (addressing the hardware and software of the system) and is sustained over time. |
Exploitation Route | The outcomes are already being taken forward by senior provincial health managers in their continued stewardship of the provincial health system, through their engagements and interactions across provinces and at national level, and through their interactions with others at international level. The outcomes are also being used in the wider teaching programmes of the research team - whose target audiences include South African and African public health system leaders. The outcomes are relevant to all others responsible for, or supporting, large-scale heath system strengthening. |
Sectors | Healthcare,Government, Democracy and Justice |
Description | This project has informed the policy debates, discourse and wider health system development actions in the Western Cape province, specifically - and is being infused into national debates. These can be seen as a set of conceptual policy impacts. The project was conducted collaboratively with senior policy makers in the Western Cape province of South Africa. Alongside their direct involvement in the project - guiding its work, being involved in data analysis and synthesis, presenting findings to others and discussing them, and co-authoring a formal written product - these colleagues have used the findings within the broader policy development discussions which they lead/engage with, infusing the findings into the ongoing policy trajectory of the Provincial department of Health. This has continued even after the project ended. As specific examples: 1) The project specifically noted that the department of health needed to move towards 'deepening system change', meaning supporting organisational culture culture change to foster distributed leadership and learning: and this challenge has been picked up in a number of ways subsequently eg. new forms of monitoring and evaluation that allow more detailed and thoughtful engagement with the data and experiences presented by a wider range of health department actors, to support future action; efforts to encourage innovation and learning - including, 2019 and 2020, annual awards for innovation and 'boundary spanning leadership', and provincial annual meetings that celebrate awardees under the banner 'collaborate, innovate, learn and adapt'; 2) Dr.K Vallahbjee is the senior provincial health manager who leads provincial health policy development; in 2019 he was responsible for drafting the department's next five year plan and directly included findings from the '20 year review' (this project) as the foundation for the proposals for the next five years. 3) The lessons of the project continued to inform the WC department of health as it reflected on its adaptive governance capacity, in responding to COVID-19, and considered how this capacity could be strengthened. In these and other ways, then, the lessons from the project have already been infused into the broader policy dialogue, debate, proposals and actions that are supporting ongoing health system development provincially. Finally, these lessons are also being fed into national discussions - through dialogue with other provincial leaders and in engagements with national leaders - by these same policy-makers, spreading the essential ideas further. |
First Year Of Impact | 2017 |
Sector | Healthcare |
Impact Types | Policy & public services |
Description | Contributing to policy development in the Department of Health |
Geographic Reach | Local/Municipal/Regional |
Policy Influence Type | Contribution to a national consultation/review |
Description | Influence over provincial health five year planning framework |
Geographic Reach | Local/Municipal/Regional |
Policy Influence Type | Implementation circular/rapid advice/letter to e.g. Ministry of Health |
Description | Input to Provincial Health Departments Evaluation Framework |
Geographic Reach | Local/Municipal/Regional |
Policy Influence Type | Contribution to a national consultation/review |
Impact | PI of research team was asked to provide comments to health departments Evaluation Framework 'Departmental Evaluation Plan Western Cape Government: Health 2017 - 2019'. This input was used to prepare the final version of the framework which is now being implemented in the Department. |
Description | Policy makers invited to teach on Public Health Masters program |
Geographic Reach | Local/Municipal/Regional |
Policy Influence Type | Influenced training of practitioners or researchers |
Description | Report on Re-thinking Monitoring and Evaluation |
Geographic Reach | Local/Municipal/Regional |
Policy Influence Type | Implementation circular/rapid advice/letter to e.g. Ministry of Health |
Description | Research has contributed to teaching in Public Health Masters and Postgraduate diploma in Health Management |
Geographic Reach | Local/Municipal/Regional |
Policy Influence Type | Influenced training of practitioners or researchers |
Impact | Too soon to access impacts, and ultimate impacts of this kind are difficult to attribute to the intervention. |
Description | CHESAI |
Amount | R45,000 (ZAR) |
Organisation | International Development Research Centre |
Sector | Public |
Country | Canada |
Start | 11/2016 |
End | 11/2016 |
Description | 'Better Spaces' Planning Meeting |
Organisation | Western Cape Government |
Department | Department of Health |
Country | South Africa |
Sector | Public |
PI Contribution | Provide feedback and technical input to a resilience toolkit proposed for the "Better Spaces" project, an inter-sectoral initiative being implemented by the Department of Health to meet Sustainable Development Goals. Further research plans being discussed as part of a PHD project to be done collaboratively with the Department of Health. |
Collaborator Contribution | Invited researchers to provide technical input to resilience toolkit, and develop future research plans. |
Impact | Continued engagement. |
Start Year | 2017 |
Description | Governance Think Tank |
Organisation | Western Cape Government |
Department | Department of Health |
Country | South Africa |
Sector | Public |
PI Contribution | The Governance Think Tank was established as a partnership between Health Policy and Systems Researchers at two universities in the Western Cape, and the Western Cape Department of Health (WCDoH) senior management team. The research team sources relevant papers for discussion, and provided critical reflections (drawn from previous work and international experience) on governance issues faced by the WCDoH. The initiative is a thinking space, and provides a platform for researchers and policy makers & practitioners to learn together. |
Collaborator Contribution | The Western Cape Department of Health (WCDoH) senior management team contributes by bringing priority issues facing the health department to discuss allowing researchers to learn from current challenges and experiences. |
Impact | This is a multi-disciplinary collaboration. It does not seek to produce outputs in the form of publications, but rather seeks to inform policy making by contributing to developing ideas collectively. |
Start Year | 2017 |
Description | Implementation of Research Project |
Organisation | University of the Western Cape |
Department | School of Public Health |
Country | South Africa |
Sector | Academic/University |
PI Contribution | Co-ordination, Guidance and Logistics. |
Collaborator Contribution | Technical support and guidance. |
Impact | See all inputs |
Start Year | 2015 |
Description | Implementation of Research Project |
Organisation | Western Cape Government |
Department | Department of Health |
Country | South Africa |
Sector | Public |
PI Contribution | Co-ordination, Guidance and Logistics. |
Collaborator Contribution | Technical support and guidance. |
Impact | See all inputs |
Start Year | 2015 |
Description | Indaba: Western Cape Department of Health Annual Meeting |
Organisation | Western Cape Government |
Department | Department of Health |
Country | South Africa |
Sector | Public |
PI Contribution | Invited to Department of Health's annual reflection and planning meeting to facilitate small group discussions. |
Collaborator Contribution | Invited researcher to annual planning meeting to share current thinking of the Department of Health to inform future research priorities. |
Impact | Ongoing engagement in co-producing research that supports health system development. |
Start Year | 2017 |
Description | Management Efficiency and Alignment Process Engagement |
Organisation | Western Cape Government |
Department | Department of Health |
Country | South Africa |
Sector | Public |
PI Contribution | Facilitation of organisational change process for Department of Health. |
Collaborator Contribution | Invited researchers to facilitate. |
Impact | Continued engagement with researchers to support a learning organisation. |
Start Year | 2018 |
Description | Resilience Workshop |
Organisation | Western Cape Government |
Department | Department of Health |
Country | South Africa |
Sector | Public |
PI Contribution | Researchers contributed by providing input to workshop design, and facilitation on the day. |
Collaborator Contribution | Invited researchers to participate in resilience workshop. |
Impact | Continued engagement with researchers on building resilience in the WCDoH. |
Start Year | 2016 |
Description | Support for review of initial phase of COVID-19 response Western Cape province |
Organisation | Western Cape Department of Health |
Country | South Africa |
Sector | Public |
PI Contribution | Supported a process of internal review about the governance factors that enabled or constrained the Department of Health's COVID-19 response |
Collaborator Contribution | Helped guide and support the review; draw on the review in considering developing lessons for how to strengthen the COVID-19 responses. |
Impact | An internal report on the processes of adaptive governance that supported Western Cape Department of Health's responses to COVID-19; and a separate published chapter on tn=he early months of the Western Cape Department of Health's responses to COVID-19; continued collaboration |
Start Year | 2020 |
Description | Western Cape Department of Health annual meeting 2020 |
Organisation | Western Cape Department of Health |
Country | South Africa |
Sector | Public |
PI Contribution | Invited to make a presentation on learning health systems as part of a continuing process of collaboration |
Collaborator Contribution | Department of Health brought together several hundred staff to discuss key priorities, including learning as a key element of health systems |
Impact | Strengthened collaboration |
Start Year | 2020 |
Description | Western Cape HPSR hub |
Organisation | University of the Western Cape |
Country | South Africa |
Sector | Academic/University |
PI Contribution | Shared endeavour as a collaboration for co-production of knowledge. This partnership existed before the award, but the award has allowed for a deepening of relationships. |
Collaborator Contribution | Researchers from both academic institutions and colleagues from the senior management team in the department of health have worked collaboratively on this research project - with members on the working group (shaping the research through iterative cycles and discussions with provincial department of health colleagues) and researchers from both institutions collectively doing data collection and analysis. |
Impact | As a consequence of these partnerships, existing activities have continued (such as journal club) and this has allowed for deeper relationships to be formed, and new initiatives to be developed (such as the researcher-policy think tank) 1. Journal Club: Bi-monthly journal club to discuss HPSR papers and share relevant experience between researchers and policy-makers, intended to develop common understandings and better knowledge of each others' perspectives. The journal club has had influence over policy thinking and provincial policy documents, and has helped to inform research priorities. 2. Researcher-Policy think tank: a new outcome recently established aimed at deepening understandings in priority areas such as governance. The group is made up of a researchers from both institutions, and policy makers from the department of health's senior management team. |
Start Year | 2010 |
Description | WholeSyst-SA Working Group |
Organisation | Government of Catalonia |
Department | Department of Health |
Country | Spain |
Sector | Public |
PI Contribution | Shared endeavour as a collaboration for co-production of knowledge |
Collaborator Contribution | Shared endeavour as a collaboration for co-production of knowledge |
Impact | This group is also linked to the journal club and researcher - policy think tank mentioned in previous section. |
Start Year | 2015 |
Description | Commissioned to provide strategic advice on Departmental M&E |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | Regional |
Primary Audience | Policymakers/politicians |
Results and Impact | Requested to provided strategic input to the Department of Health with regards to whole system strategy, policy and M&E and appropriate structuring of departmental units responsible for this. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018,2019 |
Description | Documentary film used in teaching |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
Results and Impact | The documentary film about the Wetsern Cape Emergency Services that was developed as a product of the study is used in the UCT MPH course, Introduction to Health Systems, which reaches an international audience - mostly from Africa but also including some students from other countries. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018,2019,2020 |
Description | Expert panel: Sharing policy makers' experience developing resilient health systems. |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
Results and Impact | Policy-makers presented their own experience of the actions being taken to strengthen health system resilience in the Lebanon, Kerala State, India and the Western Cape province, South Africa. The session was held at the international symposium on health systems research. The discussions gave policy makers a platform to share their experiences from different contexts, and sparked a lovely debate afterwards. The contributing panel were all policy-makers who have led - and still lead- action in their health systems to respond to challenges and nurture resilience. The substantive content of the session focused on the experiences of: 1) The Lebanon, which, in a continuing context of political instability, saw its population increase by 30% 2011-2013 due to the influx of Syrian refugees, and yet has managed to sustain health system performance - maintaining and even improving health outcomes in that time; 2) Kerala State, India, which, building on a long history of strong health system performance, has more recently taken innovative action to address the new challenge of non- communicable diseases and expand the space of decision-making in the health system; and 3) the Western Cape province, South Africa, which has sustained a more than 20 year process of health system transformation to redress the legacy of apartheid and meet the new challenges of a quadruple burden of disease, a population growing due to internal migration and a stagnating economy. The session included presentations outlining the critical elements of context and experience in each setting. Our target audience included managers and policy makers from other health systems, as well as researchers, students and funding agencies interested in learning from policy-makers and managers. The significance of this session for the symposium was its focus on real-world experiences of nurturing health system resilience, the presentation of a range of experiences, and the provision of an opportunity to hear from, and engage with, policy makers. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2016 |
Description | Head of department visits to discuss learning in the health system |
Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | Regional |
Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
Results and Impact | I was invited to accompany the head of the provincial health department in a series of meetings with health managers across the province to understand their experiences over the last five years - what shocks they have faced, how they have managed them, what they learnt and how they learnt. I also advise the head of the department on how to structure these sessions and worked with her to synthesise key themes from the experiences reported. This set of meetings and their focus on learning and being a learning organisation is direct follow up of the findings of this project's review of an earlier period of health system development - and its conclusion about the need to .deepen organisaional culture change to strengthen the provincial health system. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2020 |
Description | Journal Club: Learning Organisations |
Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | Local |
Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
Results and Impact | Journal club: joint activity between health researchers and colleagues in the Department of Health (DoH) to discuss key health priorities of the DoH and discuss research that addresses these priorities. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2017,2018,2019 |
Description | Journal Club: Public Value |
Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | Local |
Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
Results and Impact | Journal club: joint activity between health researchers and colleagues in the Department of Health (DoH) to discuss key health priorities of the DoH and discuss research that addresses these priorities. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2017,2018,2019 |
Description | Multiple informal consultations where senior decision makers in the Department of Health request input from the research team. |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | Local |
Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
Results and Impact | Multiple informal consultations where senior decision makers in the Department of Health request input from the research team. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2017 |
Description | Planning Research Dissemination |
Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | Local |
Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
Results and Impact | The purpose of the workshop was to generate ideas to communicate findings of research more broadly across the Department of Health. A series of ideas were generated. The Director of Communications will lead the research dissemination process, and will be supported by the research team. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2017 |
Description | Presentation at 2019 Provincial Health Indaba |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | Regional |
Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
Results and Impact | I made a presentation on learning organisations to the Annual gathering of senior health managers in the Western Cape province - the focus on learning organisations has bene picked up from the work of this project and is now central to system development debates in the province |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2020 |
Description | Research Findings Workshop with Director of Communications at the Department of Health |
Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | Local |
Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
Results and Impact | Purpose of the workshop was to share research findings and discuss methods of dissemination in the Department of Health. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2017 |
Description | Steering committee |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | Local |
Primary Audience | Policymakers/politicians |
Results and Impact | The WholeSystSA steering committee is an opportunity for the core research team (made up of researchers and senior managers) to share findings and receive input on research from the head of department and the chief operations officer in the department of health. This allows for the work to be part of a reflective learning cycle, and ultimately feed into policy making processes. It also serves to increase research rigour though member checking and triangulation of evidence. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2015,2016,2017,2018 |
Description | Think Tank: Re-thinking Monitoring and Evaluation in the Department of Health |
Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | Regional |
Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
Results and Impact | The purpose of the 'Rethinking M&E' think tank was to co-produce a set of ideas from people working across the health department to inform future M&E processes. A report that documented ideas generated to be used for future planning in the Department of Health was produced. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2017 |
Description | Timeline mapping workshop: Rural Districts |
Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | Regional |
Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
Results and Impact | A timeline mapping workshop with health managers from 5 rural districts was held in order to gather views across the health department of key changes and events that occurred over the last 22 years. The workshops allowed for a total of 73 health managers to be engaged int he research process and provide inputs based on their own experiences. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2016 |
Description | Timeline mapping workshop: Urban District |
Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | Regional |
Primary Audience | Policymakers/politicians |
Results and Impact | A timeline mapping workshop with health managers from the urban district was held in order to gather views across the health department of key changes and events that occurred over the last 22 years. The workshops allowed for a total of 73 health managers to be engaged int he research process and provide inputs based on their own experiences. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2016 |
Description | WholeSyst teaching case study |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
Results and Impact | The study findings are used as a case study in the UCT MPH programme course, Introduction to Health Systems - which is taken by around 40-45 students every year who come from all over Africa and sometimes, other parts of the world |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018,2019,2020 |