Making Health Systems Work in Low and Middle Income Countries: Textbook for Public Health Practitioners

The importance of health systems has been reinforced by the commitment of Low- and Middle-Income Countries (L&MICs) to pursue the targets of Universal Health Coverage, Health Security, and to achieve Health-related Sustainable Development Goals. The COVID-19 pandemic has further exposed the fragility of health systems in countries of all income groups. Authored by international experts across five continents, this book demonstrates how health systems can be strengthened in L&MICs by unravelling their complexities and by offering a comprehensive overview of fundamental concepts, performance assessment approaches and improvement strategies to address health system challenges in L&MICs. Centred on evidence and advocacy this unique resource on health systems in L&MICs will benefit a wide range of audiences including, readers engaged in public health practice, educational programs and research initiatives; faculties of public health and population sciences; policymakers, managers and health professionals working for governments, civil society organizations and development agencies in health.

Sameen Siddiqi is Professor and Chair, Department of Community Health Sciences, Aga Khan University, Pakistan. He has previously served as Director, Health System Development WHO Regional Office for the Eastern Mediterranean where he spearheaded the work on universal health coverage, WHO's Representative to Lebanon and Iran, and worked for the World Bank in Pakistan. He has been advising L&MICs on strengthening health systems for over two decades, and has special interest in health system governance, private health sector and public private partnership, and quality and safety of care. He has multiple publications and book chapters, serves on the editorial boards of peer-reviewed journals and several international committees on global health.

Awad Mataria is the Director of Universal Health Coverage/Health Systems at the WHO Regional Office for the Eastern Mediterranean. He has more than 18 years' experience in health systems strengthening, health economics and health financing. For the last 12 years, he has supported countries of the Eastern Mediterranean Region to strengthen their health systems with focus on health financing reforms. At present, Dr Mataria is spearheading WHO's health system rebuilding efforts in the twenty-two countries of the Eastern-Mediterranean Region, leveraging the lessons learnt from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Katherine D. Rouleau is a family physician at Unity Health- St. Michael's Hospital in Toronto, Canada, Vice-Chair of the Global Health & Social Accountability program and is director of the WHO Collaborating Centre on Family Medicine and Primary Care at the Department of Family and Community Medicine, University of Toronto. She was the founding director of the Besrour Centre for Global Family Medicine at the College of Family Physicians of Canada and has worked with numerous collaborators over a 25-year career committed to primary care strengthening and family medicine in L&MICs, including collaboration with partners from, Ethiopia, Haiti, Brazil, China and Chile. She has worked as a consultant for the World Health Organization on various endeavours related to advancing PHC. Her academic, clinical and leadership interests center on improving health equity and addressing the complex health needs of individuals and communities impacted by adverse determinants of health through high quality primary care at macro, meso and micro levels.

Meesha Iqbal is a PhD student at UTHealth School of Public Health Houston, USA, with interest in health systems governance and strengthening, private sector engagement and universal health coverage. She has worked as a consultant with the Aga Khan University, World Health Organization and International Labour Organization, carrying out regional and national situation analyses related to engagement of private sector in healthcare delivery and child labour in domestic work. She has also contributed to epidemiological assessments of health status of vulnerable populations in low- and middle-income countries, with a focus on child labour and intimate partner violence. Her recent work engulfs assessment and improvement of community preparedness to disasters and pandemics in Idaho, USA.