ABR Seminar on UHC (28-29jan19): Dr Grace Ku on assessment of UHC in the Philippines

At the International ABR Seminar on UHC (Singapore, 28-29 January 2019),  Dr Grace Ku from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel and Médecins Sans Frontières in Belgium, will discuss an assessment framework for UHC and apply it to the Philippine health system.

Universal Health Coverage, quo vadis? An assessment of UHC in the Philippines using health systems lenses

The UHC bill has been recently ratified in the Philippines. Considering the health agenda of the previous administration, this would be the second attempt to implement UHC. Based on the definition of UHC by WHO, we believe that a foundation of a prepared health system would be a requisite for successful implementation. We thus deemed it ideal to assess the readiness level using a health systems perspective and constructed a framework for assessment. Considering the WHO definition of and objectives for UHC, we adapted WHO’s six building blocks of a functioning health system, the essentials of UHC according to WHO, the four dimensions of access, Levesque et al’s (2013) definition of access, and the Institute of Medicine’s (2001) six domains of care quality. We will be using this framework to assess the readiness level of the Philippine public health system for UHC implementation and sustainability.

Dr Grace Marie V. Ku

is a family physician with BSc and Doctor of Medicine degrees from the University of Santo Tomas in the Philippines, a MSc in Public Health from the Institute of Tropical Medicine in Antwerp, Belgium and a Doctorate in Medical Sciences (PhD Public Health) from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB). She has been a clinician and training officer in Family Medicine, and Chief Quality Assurance Unit at the Veterans Memorial Medical Center in the Philippines. Dr Ku has also been the Deputy Director of the Institute of Health Policy and Developmental Studies at the Philippine National Institutes of Health. Currently she is Executive Officer at the Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) Ethics Review Board and Guest Professor at the Faculty of Medicine at the VUB, as well as a member of the VLIR-UOS Selection Committee.