Resource Type: Brief
Authors: Rachel Rosen, Karishma Bhuwanee, and Catherine Connor
Published: September 2018

Resource Description: Tracking all health resources as expenditures or revenues helps countries understand and improve health system financing and performance. Country governments and partners have made significant investments over the past three decades to strengthen the production and use of health resource tracking (HRT) data in low- and middle-income countries. The objective of these investments has been to institutionalize HRT so it is led and owned by local governments. Based on years of field work and collaboration with other HRT experts, HFG observed useful lessons that could guide future efforts to institutionalize health resource tracking. This brief argues that, whilst much effort has been invested in technical capacity of local teams, institutionalizing resource tracking requires thinking more broadly and investing in areas that are not traditionally regarded as RT investments e.g. in underlying data systems, promoting routine data collection, and building a culture of evidence-based decisions. These new investments require new ways of working for HRT teams, including engaging with a wider group of stakeholders, such as national statistics institutes, health information systems experts, public financial management information systems staff in ministries of finance, and civil society leaders in health.