Universal health coverage (UHC) is one of the key approaches in achieving the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). On October 25-26, 2018, the Global Conference on Primary Health Care was held in Kazakhstan, and the Declaration of Astana was signed by 197 Member States under the leadership of the World Health Organization (WHO). In this Declaration, strengthening primary health care system has been considered as an essential step towards achieving Universal Health Coverage.
This thematic series of articles is being launched by the Global Health Research and Policy (GHRP) to serve as a platform to disseminate current research findings, insights, new perspectives, and policy recommendations in promoting UHC worldwide. This will serve to create better knowledge transfer from researches to policy-making and practices and for information and experience sharing. GHRP is encouraging submissions of commentaries, reviews, research articles, and short report of policies on the key elements of UHC. Elements that can be covered in the submissions may include, but not limited to the following:
● Health financing system strengthening, with special focus on the development of health financial protection schemes for the disadvantaged population, as well as the integration of different insurance programs.
● Primary healthcare system strengthening, with special focus on health workforce and delivery network of primary health care services, equity and quality of primary health care, information systems construction, etc.
● People-centered health care system, with special focus on the integration of specialist healthcare services and primary health care, and the provision of continuous services to improve patient experience, etc.
● Essential medicines and health products, with special focus on strategic purchasing, relevant mechanism designs and market entry for insurance benefit package.
● Medical assistance programs for poverty alleviation as an approach to increase UHC.
This thematic series will be guest edited by Dr. Beibei Yuan (beibeiyuan@bjmu.edu.cn), Associate Professor from Peking University and Dr. Lanting Lu (lanting.lu@ruc.edu.cn), Associate Professor from Renmin University of and Dr. Don Eliseo Lucero-Prisno III (donprisno@hotmail.com) from Wuhan University.
Submissions from anywhere in the world are welcome. Authors are advised to select the Thematic Series option “Universal Health Coverage” during their submission. The deadline of submission is extended to May 31, 2019.
Authors of accepted articles are automatically eligible to vie for the best five articles. The first authors or corresponding authors of these five articles will be personally invited to the Third “Global Health Youth Leadership” Round-table Conference as Keynote Speakers in August 2019 in Beijing, China, which will be hosted by Wuhan University Global Health Institute in collaboration with the National Health Commission of China.
Articles in the series will be available on this page upon online.