Expert Insight
Toward Health for All: Reimagining HIV and PHC for a post-COVID world
On Thursday, August 13th PHCPI hosted for Toward Health For All: Reimagining HIV and PHC for a post-COVID world.
Missed the event? Watch the video here.
This webinar highlighted how countries can strengthen primary health care systems to ensure comprehensive, quality and equitable care for those living with and affected by HIV, particularly key populations and other marginalized groups. COVID-19 has posed new challenges for key populations to accessing care, while also exposing longstanding weaknesses in health systems’ abilities to reach everyone in need.
Building on commitments made in 2018 at the Global Conference on Primary Health Care in Astana, Kazakhstan, the event provided a forum for the HIV and PHC communities to discuss strategies for effectively integrating HIV and primary health care, the challenges we must overcome to do so, and how we can work together to improve health systems to connect all people with trusted providers and people-centered care throughout their lives – even during crises.
The discussion featured:
- Sonia Florisse, Portfolio Manager, The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria
- Dr. Lisa Hirschhorn, Senior Advisor, Ariadne Labs
- Dr. Jean Kagubare, Deputy Director for Health Systems Design, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
- Dr. Anthony Ofosu, Deputy Director, General Ghana Health Services
- Professor Shabir Moosa, President, The African Forum for Primary Health Care
- Lillian Mworeko, Executive Director, The International Community of Women Living with HIV Eastern Africa
- Dr. Yogan Pillay, Country Director, South Africa and Senior Global Director for Universal Health Coverage, Clinton Health Access Initiative; formerly Deputy Director-General, South Africa National Department of Health
- Dr. Laurel Sprague, Chief, Community Mobilization, Community Support, Social Justice and Inclusion Department, UNAIDS
- Beth Tritter, Executive Director, PHCPI
Speaker Bios (In Order of Appearance)
Beth Tritter is the Executive Director of PHCPI. Previously, Ms. Tritter was the Vice President for the Department of Policy and Evaluation at the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), where she directed the MCC’s policy development, economic analysis, program evaluation and learning, and Threshold Program. She was also a Managing Director at the Glover Park Group and a legislative director for New York Congresswoman Nita Lowey. Ms. Tritter holds a master’s degree and bachelor’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania.
Before joining CHAI in June, Dr. Yogan Pillay served as deputy director-general for health programs in South Africa’s national department of health since 2008. Prior to that, he served the department of health in various roles, including Chief Director for Strategic Planning and Director for the district health system.
Under his leadership, South Africa’s immunization program expanded to include three new vaccines: rotavirus, pneumococcus, and human papillomavirus. He also helped introduce two popular mobile platforms to address youth and maternal health: B-Wise improves access to health information for young people and MomConnect is a weekly text message service for pregnant women and new mothers. In 2011, he and his team began expanding access to Genexpert, an affordable testing platform for tuberculosis. He has also served on the ministerial committee on National Health Insurance (South Africa’s version of universal health coverage) and led efforts to develop service benefits for various levels of care in the country.
Professor Shabir Moosa is a family physician with an MBA and PhD. He has extensive experience in rural general practice and the development of family medicine and primary care services in both rural and urban district health services in South Africa and Africa. Shabir is deeply involved in development and research around family medicine and community-oriented primary health care (COPC) in Africa. Prior to his current role, Dr. Moosa studied at the University of Natal Medical School, a hotbed of anti-apartheid activism. After graduation, Shabir started private general practice from 1990 in Kokstad, a small rural town near Transkei. Shabir completed his PhD in 2015 on the emergence of family medicine in Africa. He continues to practice as a family physician in Soweto, building Chiawelo Community Practice, as a COPC model for primary health care within NHI.
Lillian Mworeko is the Executive Director for the International Community of Women living with HIV Eastern Africa. A Ugandan and a mother of three, she is a gender, human rights and women’s rights defender. She is the 2019 CHANGE’s Courageous Change Maker Award Winner; 2016 Uganda HIV&AIDS Leadership Award Winner, 2015 Justice Makers Award Winner; 2014 ICW Inaugural Sisterhood Award Winner and 2012 Maryhill High School Old Girls Association (MOGA) Award Winner.
Lillian served as a member of the Global Community Advisory Board for ECHO Trial. She is currently the co-convener together with UN Women of the Household Settings Thematic area of the Global Partnership for Action to Eliminate all Forms of HIV related Stigma and Discrimination. She is a member of the WHO eMTCT Global Validation Advisory Committee and until August 2019, Lillian was a member of the Global Fund Community Rights and Gender Advisory Group for the Community Rights Gender Department at the Global fund. Lillian is a go-getter. Passionate about gender, women’s rights and aspiration including their Sexual Reproductive Health and Rights and access to their full rights including prevention, care, treatment and support services.
Lisa Hirschhorn currently serves as a Professor of Medical Social Sciences at Northwestern University in the Feinberg School of Medicine and Affiliate Faculty at Ariadne Labs. Prior to her appointment at Northwestern, Dr. Hirschhorn was the director of the Implementation and Improvement Science Platform at Ariadne Labs and Associate Professor of Medicine at the Harvard Medical School Department of Global Health and Social Medicine. In this role, Dr. Hirschhorn helped to scale-up and expand the implementation of the effective interventions developed by the programmatic research at Ariadne Labs. Trained in infectious disease and public health, she has worked for three decades to study and improve the effectiveness and quality of care in the US and LMICs in HIV, primary care, maternal and child health and NCDs. Her work has also focused on developing capacity and more effective methods for monitoring and evaluation to improve access, utilization, equity and outcomes of care in the United States and internationally. Most recently she was co-PI on the Africa Health Initiative health systems strengthening project in Rwanda designed to strengthen and study more effective primary health care delivery in two rural districts. She is widely published in the areas of implementation and improvement science.
Laurel Sprague is Chief, Community Engagement, at the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV and AIDS (UNAIDS). She came to UNAIDS from the Global Network of People Living with HIV (GNP+) where she served as Executive Director. Previously, she served as Global Research Fellow on HIV, Gender, and Justice for the HIV Justice Network, Research Director for the Sero Project, and Regional Coordinator for the North American Network of People Living with HIV. Laurel represented North American civil society organizations as an NGO Delegate to the UNAIDS Programme Coordinating Board from 2014-2016. From 2007 to 2015, she taught political and feminist theory and political science at Wayne State University (Detroit, Michigan) and Eastern Michigan University (Ypsilanti, Michigan). She holds a Master of Science degree in Conflict Resolution and a doctorate in Political Theory, with a dissertation focused on inclusive representation of marginalized groups in global institutions.
Sonia Florisse is a Senior Fund Portfolio Manager at The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, managing the Mali grants portfolio. She has managed Global Fund portfolios for several countries in WCA in the last 14 years, including The Gambia, Gabon, Guinea, Equatorial Guinea and Cote d’Ivoire. Before joining the Global Fund, she worked 8 years at the WHO Headquarters in Geneva and at the Pan American Health Organization in Washington D.C. as a Technical Officer on PMTCT and Planning Officer supporting WHO country offices in Africa and Latin America develop their Country Cooperation Strategies. Previously, she worked at ENDA Sante, Senegal on HIV prevention to Key Populations and vulnerable communities. Sonia holds a MA in political sciences, a Specialized diploma in Development Aid and Programme Management from Sorbonne University, Paris and a MSc in Health Policy from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
Anthony Ofosu is a public health physician from Ghana with twenty five years of experience working in the public health sector in Ghana. He has an interest in Health System Strengthening and using information communication technology to address service bottlenecks. He is currently the Deputy Director General of the Ghana Health Service, and previously the Deputy Director in charge of Information Monitoring and Evaluation in the Policy Planning Monitoring and Evaluation Division. In that position he led the country wide roll out of the DHIS2 in Ghana as well as the roll out of DHIS2 etracker for the collection of transactional data from services rendered at primary health care facilities in Ghana. He was also involved in the Novartis supported roll out of Telemedicine in some regions in Ghana.
Dr. Jean Kagubare | Deputy Director, Global Primary Health Care Systems, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
Dr. Jean Kagubare oversees a grant portfolio that focuses on research, analysis, and technical assistance to improve primary health care through health systems design and financing. Jean has more than 30 years of experience in the areas of clinical and public health, particularly in the planning and management of public health programs in developing countries. Before joining the foundation, he was the global technical lead for health care financing at Management Sciences for Health, where he provided technical expertise for the design and implementation of results-based financing programs and community health insurance schemes. In Rwanda, Jean held senior management positions and served as the director of the national HIV/AIDS program; was coordinator of the World Bank Health and Population Project; served as director general of the King Faisal National Referral Hospital; was director of the Health Planning Directorate; and served as chair of the Management and Economics Department at the School of Public Health. He also worked as a medical officer in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Belgium, South Africa, and Rwanda. Jean earned his medical degree from the University of Kinshasa, an M.P.H. from the University of Brussels, and a Ph.D. in health systems from Johns Hopkins University.