BCEPS participation at the Ninth National Summit of Health and Population Scientists in Nepal

This year’s theme was 'Research for Health: Translating Evidence and Innovation into Actions'

The National Summit of Health and Population Scientists in Nepal was started in 2015 by the Nepal Health Research Council, the apex body for health research in Nepal for regulating research, generating and promoting the use of evidence for policy and strategy. The Summit is an annual scientific gathering of researchers in the health and population sector, policymakers, and program managers of the health system in Nepal including those beyond the government system, academicians, and students. The summit takes place in Kathmandu, the capital city of Nepal on an annual basis and this year’s theme was ‘Research for Health: Translating Evidence and Innovation into Actions’ aimed at promoting the use of evidence for decision-making with a focus on how a large number of health research evidence generated every year can be effectively translated into policy and action.

Photo:

Anil Poudyal, NHRC

Ensuring a fair and efficient path toward UHC

BCEPS Senior Researcher Krishna Aryal participated and presented in a session on Population Health on the topic ‘Ensuring a fair and efficient path towards UHC: Judicious Priority Setting of Health System Interventions’. Spread across several other sessions, the summit brought into discourse the still prevailing inequalities in healthcare access and population health outcomes and addressed the challenges through appropriate financing mechanisms including national health insurance among several other topics such as climate change and planetary health, public health emergencies. Krishna shared about Universal Health Coverage and how countries can ensure an efficient path towards UHC through priority setting of health system interventions and discussed the dimensions of the UHC cube on how it should be viewed and be linked to priority setting for efficient use of resources including about the use of FairChoices DCP Analytics Tool for priority setting.

Though Nepal has UHC at the core of national strategic documents guiding the health sector, much appears to be done to realize the universality. In addition, inequalities still prevail with the coverage of various services being low for people marginalized by geography, ethnicity, economic status, and so on. Ensuring equitable access to health services with financial risk protection and fair improvement of population health outcomes is further challenged by scarce healthcare resources resulting from plateaued development assistance for health and the country’s inability to have a sufficient growth rate in domestic funding to close the financing gap. Priority setting of health system interventions has thus become inevitable and more so for countries like Nepal. Krishna further discussed that it is high time for Nepal to start with the development of guidelines for efficient and fair priority setting and institutionalize the process within an appropriate unit at the MoHP tailoring the process to the federal context.

For more information on the summit visit Summit NHRC – Seventh National Summit

Sessions are available on the 9th National Summit of Health & Population Scientist in Nepal - YouTube