By Louise Hallman

“What can we do to make interventions known to work and save lives reach every patient, every time they are needed?” asks M. Rashad Massoud.

Opening the debate on the ISQua Knowledge Portal, Mr. Massoud, Senior Vice President for the Quality and Performance Institute and Director of the US Agency for International Development (USAID) Health Care Improvement Project URC in Washington, DC, hopes to prompt discussion ahead of Salzburg Global Seminar’s session this weekend.

‘Making Health Care Better in Low and Middle Income Economies: What are the next steps and how do we get there?’, the fourth in a series of Seminars on the topic of Health and Healthcare, will welcome over 60 health care professionals from more than 35 countries to Schloss Leopoldskron on Sunday, April 22, 2012 for seven days of high-level discussions. But Session Chair, Mr. Massoud hopes the participation in the session will be much wider than that.

“We understand that not everyone who we would have loved to have in Salzburg in person can be there,” says Session Chair M. Rashad Massoud. “However, we want as many of you as possible to participant in the conversation and outcomes at the Seminar. Your input on the website will enrich and feed into the conversations taking place during the Seminar. We also plan to have an e-conferencing feature; on a daily basis, we will upload key points, discussions, recommendations made during the Seminar to the ISQua Knowledge Portal for you to view as well as to comment on.”

The session, held in partnership with ISQua, The International Society for Quality in Health Care, will follow on from previous sessions’ discussions to debate the progress made so far in meeting such targets as the Millennium Development Goals and the accomplishments in improving healthcare quality and safety in lower and middle income economies.

Whilst improvements in health care have clearly been made in the past number of years, and this progress should be acknowledged and praised, this progress has since “plateaued” says Salzburg Global Seminar Program Director, John Lotherington, making it necessary for health care professionals to address the issues and challenges that still lie ahead, instead of becoming complacent. One such issue that fellows and faculty alike will consider is the role in leadership, a factor that faculty member Edward Kelley, head of strategic programs for WHO Patient Safety in Geneva, Switzerland, highlights as having been surprisingly overlooked thus far.

“Unfortunately, leadership, while being one of the foundations for health systems strengthening, is also one of the least invested in and least understood topics that we have,” opines Kelley in his discussion-provoking video on the ISQua Knowledge Portal.

“If everyone agrees that leadership is important, the issue we have now is how to encourage and nurture leadership.”

Kelley poses the question online: “How do we identify and nurture leadership for improvement at all levels in the health system? What can national governments and donor agencies do to support this leadership development?” Questions, no doubt, that will be raised again, and hopefully answered, during the session.

As well as the various formal session discussions, to be held on such topics as ‘The Journey to Date’, ‘The Challenges Ahead’, ‘Overcoming Issues of Confusion’, ‘Sustaining Execution’, ‘Strengthening Leadership and Policy’, ‘The Role of Quality Improvement in Health Systems Strengthening’, ‘Setting the Agenda for Learning’ and ‘The Next Steps’, the relatively intimate nature of the Salzburg Global Seminar, in contrast to larger conferences, also plays host to a number of ‘Fire Side Chats’, where participants will be able to share their personal experiences and anecdotes of the topics in a more informal setting.

Both online and session participants’ discussions will feed into a number of reports to be produced from the session, and the conclusions of the session will be presented in key policy forums, including the World Health Assembly in May in Geneva, the 29th Conference of ISQua in October in Geneva, as well as the Africa Regional Conference of ISQua in February 2013 in Accra, Ghana.

This session will be the fourth in a series at Salzburg on health and healthcare which began in 2010, responding to the demographic, organizational, and financial challenges on the horizon for the coming generation. The session themes to date have been reforming healthcare systems; shared medical decision making; and innovating for value in healthcare delivery. Further information on the session and all previous related sessions can be found on the Session event page:
http://www.salzburgglobal.org/current/sessions-b.cfm?IDSpecial_Event=3259

To take part in the online discussions before, during and after the Session, please log on to the ISQua Knowledge Portal:
http://www.isquaknowledge.org/activities/salzburg/welcome/

Participate Online!  (link opens in a new window)

Making Health Care Better in Low and Middle Income Economies: What are the next steps and how do we get there? - April 2012

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