On Wednesday, June 29, 2016, the HFG project hosted a webinar on the topic of resource tracking, featuring technical experts Karishmah Bhuwanee, Heather Cogswell, and Tesfaye Ashagari.

Countries must have a firm grasp on their health financing landscape in order to ensure sufficient and effective use of resources. Health Accounts—an internationally standardized methodology that allows a country to understand the source, magnitude, and flow of funds through its health sector—provide a wealth of information on past spending. When combined with macroeconomic, health utilization, and health indicator data, Health Accounts provide powerful insights for health financing policy.

USAID’s Health Finance and Governance (HFG) project supports countries to institutionalize their Health Accounts so that they are produced regularly and efficiently, and are a useful tool for policymakers. In this technical briefing, HFG experts used country examples to demonstrate how Health Accounts have been (and can be) used to inform national health financing decisions. The experts also provided perspectives on the future of Health Accounts.

Webinar Resources:

View presentation slides →
Download presentation slides →

Related Resources:

• Briefs
  • Follow the Money: Making the Most of Limited Health Resources
  • Policy Primer: Using Health Accounts to End Preventable Child and Maternal Deaths
  • Production and Use of Health Accounts in India: What Can We Learn from the Experience so Far?
  • System of Health Accounts 2011: What is SHA 2011 and How Are SHA 2011 Data Produced and Used?
  • System of Health Accounts (2011) and Health Satellite Accounts (2005): Comparison of Approaches
  • Tracking Urban Health Expenditures – Preliminary Results from Secondary Analysis of Bangladesh National Health Account
  • Understanding Health Accounts: A Primer for Policymakers
• Health Accounts Reports
  • Comptes de la Sante au Burundi: 2012-2013
  • Dominica 2010-2011 National Health Accounts and HIV Subaccounts
  • Namibia 2012-13 Health Accounts Report
  • Saint Kitts and Nevis 2011 National Health Accounts and HIV Subaccounts

Speaker Bios:

Karishmah Bhuwanee has 12 years of experience in health financing in international development. Her expertise is in resource tracking, particularly Health Accounts, performance-based financing for health, and public financial management. Karishmah has supported/ is supporting Health Accounts exercises in Barbados, Burundi, Dominica, Haiti, Haryana state (India) and Mozambique. She holds an MSc in International Development Management (London School of Economics), and a BA in Economics and Management (Oxford).

Heather Cogswell has over seven years of experience collecting, working with, and analyzing data. She serves as a health resource tracking specialist for the HFG Project, designing and implementing health resource tracking processes in developing countries with a focus on local ownership and integration with existing information systems. At Abt, Heather has contributed to Health Accounts exercises in Botswana, Namibia, Haryana, Barbados, St. Kitts and Nevis, and Dominica. She holds an MPH and MBA (Johns Hopkins).

Tesfaye Dereje Ashagari has 15 years of experience in the health sector. His expertise is in health finance and related issues, including health finance policy research. He has developed policy and legal frameworks for implementing health finance reform, organized/coordinated policy dialogues and consultations, helped build capacity for health care financing reform, and led resource tracking exercises, costing, and analysis. Tesfaye holds a Masters of Development Evaluation and Management (University of Antwerp) and a BA in Economics (Addis Ababa University).