LHSS Year 3 Annual Report 2021-2022
It has been a year of many challenges globally: the war in Ukraine, new disease threats, increased migration due to political, economic, and environmental crises, and inflation eroding purchasing power and threatening livelihoods. As these complex developments impact health systems and progress towards universal health coverage, the urgency of our work is indisputable. Countries the world over will need high performing, resilient health systems to maintain and improve people’s access to high-quality, equitable, affordable health care through the inevitable, though not always predictable, shocks.
This year, LHSS deepened partnerships with governments, private sector actors, and civil society organizations to address health system gaps and expand access to care to migrants, women, people living with HIV, and many other underserved groups. We applied a systems approach, working at multiple levels of the health system and across multiple sectors. LHSS continued to support countries in combating COVID-19 and vaccine misinformation, while finding opportunities to strengthen resilience against the next health shock. We published global knowledge products, sharing lessons on implementing national quality policies and strategies, integrating social determinants of health into health workforce training, and improving health budget execution. In total, LHSS supported USAID’s work in 25 countries, with new activities launched in Afghanistan, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Jamaica, Namibia, Nigeria, Ukraine, and the East Africa region.