Many tools and resources focused on high-quality primary health care have been created over the last decade. Below is an interactive resource that provides the most useful documents within the context of our defined scope of first contact accessibility, continuity, coordination, comprehensiveness, and person-centered care.
This paper pursues a comprehensive discussion of conceptual frameworks for science and policy for health equity. "As an “action oriented” framework, it is designed to help policy-makers pinpoint where to intervene in these underlying processes to most effectively fight health inequities. The model includes three core components: 1) socioeconomic and political context; 2) structural determinants of health inequities; and 3) intermediary determinants of health."
Tags: Person-centered care, Social determinants of health
This background report links the Declaration of Astana to the broader "case" for PHC, lessons learned over the past 4 decades, components of PHC, a vision of PHC in the 21st century and health system levers for action around PHC.
Tags: First contact accessibility, Continuity, Coordination, Comprehensiveness, Person-centered care
This website describes the importance of care coordination and provides examples of broad and specific care coordination approaches. It includes a multitude of resources on making actionable change within a medical practice.
Tags: Coordination
This publication provides recommendations that "are designed to help standardize the ways in which primary care practitioners activate referrals to specialists, and then keep track of the information over time." It "describes a nine-step, closed-loop process in which all relevant patient information is communicated to the correct person through the appropriate channels and in a timely manner."
Tags: Coordination
This practice brief supports the implementation of the WHO framework on integrated people-centred health services - addressing "the conditions and ongoing relationships needed to support seamless interactions among multiple providers within interdisciplinary teams and/or across care settings and/or sectors." The two concepts underlying this approach are continuity of care and care coordination.
Tags: Continuity, Coordination, Person-centered care, Responsiveness to people, Private and multisectoral engagement
This article underscores the importance of attention, measurement, and improvement efforts within to the three domains of continuity (relational, informational, and managerial). Naming continuity as a must-have priority in order to achieve UHC, the article elaborated on the feasibility of improved continuity "in low-income and middle-income country health systems by using comprehensive empanelment systems or community-based follow-up programmes to improve retention in care."
Tags: Continuity
This implementation guide addresses "why care teams are important for improving patient care and ways to build an effective care team that meet patients’ needs and expectations." It identifies "four principles that should guide any effort to provide continuous, team-based care, and presents detailed steps on how to implement continuous, team-based care."
Tags: Continuity
This resource provides a proposed conceptual blueprint for patient-centered team based care and strategies for providing patient-centered team based care, of particular relevance in the midst of increasing emphasis on delivering high-quality primary care.
Tags: Person-centered care
This practical manual contains "step-by-step guidance along with real-world examples and case studies to help facilitate public-private sector engagement around primary health care (PHC). The first two modules of the Manual provide practical guidance on Initial Communications and Partnership Around PHC and Provider Mapping."
Tags: First contact accessibility, Continuity, Coordination, Comprehensiveness, Person-centered care, Private and multisectoral engagement
This platform "is the first and only WHO instrument aimed at facilitating multistakeholder engagement and cross-sectoral collaboration to prevent and control NCDs. It convenes and connects diverse stakeholders comprising all WHO Member States, UN Organizations, and non-State actors, including relevant private sector entities, to address [the] five functions [of global coordination mechanisms]."
Tags: Coordination, Comprehensiveness, NCDs and mental health, Private and multisectoral engagement
This article "argues that it is important to distinguish between three distinct but related concepts: longitudinal continuity from a minimum number of health professionals, caring relationships between patients and professionals, and well-coordinated care between professionals." It includes questions influencing evaluation indicators and ways to navigate decisionmaking within a variety of contexts.
Tags: Continuity
This toolkit "outlines the integrated care system that Partners In Health (PIH) is using in Neno District, Malawi, to combine resources for the screening, treatment and follow-up care of HIV and NCD patients. The integrated system offers screening for diabetes, hypertension, TB, malnutrition and family planning, along with HIV screenings at patients’ homes, community centers, and health facilities."
Tags: Comprehensiveness, Coordination, NCDs and mental health, Infectious disease, Responsiveness to people
This framework for integrated people-centred health services can be adapted to all countries. The five recommended strategies are: engaging and empowering people and communities; strengthening governance and accountability; reorienting the model of care; coordinating services within and across sectors; and creating an enabling environment. The landing page for this resource outlines support countries can expect through partnering with WHO.
Tags: First contact accessibility, Continuity, Coordination, Comprehensiveness, Person-centered care, Responsiveness to people, Private and multisectoral engagement
"The Knowledge Action Portal (KAP) is a flagship online community-driven platform launched by the WHO Global Coordination Mechanism on the Prevention and Control of Noncommunicable Diseases (WHO GCM/NCD). The KAP presents users with an innovative way to enhance global understanding, interaction, and engagement across sectors for the purpose of fulfilling existing - and initiating new - commitments to noncommunicable disease (NCD) prevention and control."
Tags: First contact accessibility, Continuity, Coordination, Comprehensiveness, Person-centered care, COVID-19, NCDs and mental health, Private and multisectoral engagement
This document was produced as a part of the WHO's technical series on PHC. It offers actionable information on strengthening the role of PHC in health emergencies, supplemented by country examples of effective emergency response and opportunities for action. It concludes with evidence based lessons that countries can implement to help build PHC preparedness and response capacities to manage public health emergencies, structured around the core components of health systems.
Tags: First contact accessibility, Continuity, Coordination, Comprehensiveness, Person-centered care, COVID-19, Responsiveness to people, Resilience of health systems, Fragile and conflict affected settings
"The Practical Approach to Care Kit (PACK) is a health systems improvement programme designed to support the work of primary care health workers in underserved communities strengthen the health services in which they work and thereby achieve the best possible patient outcomes." It comprsises 4 pillars: a clinical decision support tool, a training program, measures to strengthen health systems, and monitoring and evaluation tools.
Tags: Comprehensiveness, First contact accessibility, COVID-19, Monitoring and evaluation
This technical report focuses on possible models for the integration of public health functions into PHC. This integration is required to address population health needs at the individual and community levels, moving toward a more proactive approach to health rather than the dated disease-focused model.
Tags: Comprehensiveness, Coordination, Responsiveness to people
"Amidst global consensus that high-quality PHC is the foundation of UHC, and that "significant disruptive innovation will be required to realize this goal," this publication offers "recommendations to the global community to catalye futher discourse and inform policy-making and program development on the path to Health for All by 2030."
Tags: First contact accessibility, Continuity, Coordination, Comprehensiveness, Person-centered care, UHC, Private and multisectoral engagement
This tool "was developed to assist health and program managers in obtaining and using information regarding the performance of referral systems. These systems play an increasingly important role in the health systems of developing countries as result of the recent impetus toward service integration."
Tags: Coordination
This review covers 40 years of PHC implementation at country level (from the 1978 Alma-Ata Declaration on primary health care to 2018). It identifies "achievements, challenges, lessons and best practices associated with PHC generally until 2018, [and aims] to make recommendations on the way forward in order to accelerate national, regional and global health strategies and plans for UHC, PHC and the Sustainable Development Goals."
Tags: First contact accessibility, Continuity, Coordination, Comprehensiveness, Person-centered care, UHC
This study evaluates "the performance of several risk-adjustment/stratification instruments in predicting healthcare utilization." It found that Adjusted Clinical groups (ACGs) "generally performed better in predicting utilization, [but] use of any of the models [referenced in the study] will help practice implement care coordination more effectively."
Tags: Person-centered care
"This tool is designed to help hospitals and health systems facilitate sensitive conversations with patients about their nonmedical needs that may be a barrier to good health. It includes strategic considerations for implementing a screening program, tips for tailoring screenings to hospitals’ unique communities, case examples and a list of national organizations that can help connect patients with local resources."
Tags: Person-centered care
This chapter defines people-centered integrated care (PCIC), "presenting its benefits, implementation challenges, core actions, and implementation strategies." Guidelines address (1) strengthening grassroots providers; (2) promoting grassroots level first contact; (3) establishing two-way referrals; (4) defining provider roles while fostering integration of providers; (5) emphasizing special care arrangements to treat and manage chronic diseases; (6) expanding the supply of general practice physicians to staff primary care facilities; (7) organizing provider networks; and (8) advancing information and communications technology use for electronic health systems.
Tags: First contact accessibility, Continuity, Coordination, Comprehensiveness, Person-centered care, Responsiveness to people
This publication highlights the importance of high-quality PHC as the most effective way to deliver care that meets the majority of a population's health needs and to acheve UHC. It builds on Barbara Starfield's in '4Cs': first-contact accessibility, continuity, comprehensiveness and coordination, suggesting a schematic connecting the resources of strong PHC, processes that transform resources into high-quality PHC, and the functions of high-quality PHC.
Tags: First contact accessibility, Continuity, Coordination, Comprehensiveness, Person-centered care, UHC, Responsiveness to people
This paper presents the Health Equity Measurement Framework (HEMF), "which was specifically designed to measure the direct and indirect effects of [social determinants of health] to support improved statistical modelling and measurement of health equity...The HEMF recognises the complexity surrounding the SDOH and provides a clear, overarching direction for empirical work on health equity."
Tags: First contact accessibility, Person-centered care, Social determinants of health
This document "focuses on the first component of primary health care and provides an overview of the role of the private sector in health systems in terms of providing goods and health services, particularly in primary care. It describes ways to harness the efforts of all health services, both public and private, to achieve universal health coverage, including efforts focused on primary health care."
Tags: First contact accessibility, Continuity, Coordination, Comprehensiveness, Person-centered care, Private and multisectoral engagement