Webinar – Social participation for universal health coverage: Part 4 - Necessary capacities for meaningful government engagement with populations, communities, and civil society

Background

WHO, the Health System Governance Collaborative, Health Systems Global, UHC2030, the Civil Society Engagement Mechanism (CSEM) of UHC2030 and the UHC Partnership are co-hosting a webinar series around the development of a WHO guidance document, the handbook on social participation for universal health coverage. The handbook will provide best practice guidance to policymakers on how to effectively and meaningfully engage with populations, communities and civil society in national policy, planning and review processes.

The fourth session of the series looked into necessary capacities for meaningful government engagement with populations, communities, and civil society:

Why are capacities relevant for social participation? What are capacities for social participation?

Capacity-building for both government and communities is about creating a level playing field to exchange views. Civil society must be able to interact with governments on an equal level and government cadres need to understand the added value of engaging in social participation. The capacities of different stakeholders depend on each other and on the socioeconomic context: capacity-building needs to consider the full spectrum of participation literacy.

The team synthesized available peer reviewed literature and findings from nine country case studies across the world. A consultation on the handbook content is currently open and we encourage all interested parties to take part.

The recording of this session can be found below: