Management Development

The adoption of the ‘systems-approach’ along with development and strengthening of systems to enable health services become more evidence-based and responsive to the needs of men women and children is core business of SOHIP. The concept of the term system as used and promoted by SOHIP to develop and strengthen systems can be understood at a glance by this simple diagram.

As applied to the public sector in Pakistan a system can be seen as a tri-partite need-driven relationship between the community comprising of users and non-users of services, a (public) organization/institution that develops policies and programs to respond to the needs of the community and is fueled by the payments made by the community through the tax net and public resources and a set of service providers who are engaged and resourced by the (public) organization/institution to provide the requisite services as per policies and programs to the community. This relationship, among other important aspects, needs mechanisms of governance in place especially at the organization/institution level for effective management of the service provision and mechanisms of accountability between the various parties engaged in the entire system: services to be accountable to both the organization/institution and communities they serve while organization/institution also accountable to the community at large for the resources that they access to run the system.

SOHIP’s management development agenda largely focuses at developing, strengthening and establishing the capacities and mechanisms for improved governance-management and accountability within the larger health system of the province of Punjab. SOHIP therefore works with district and provincial health departments and provincial programs and institutions to streamline and enhance management and governance capacities. A lot of capacity building measures are taken which range from formal and informal training, learning by doing, working in tandem with government partners, exposures, workshops and concept development dialogues and publications. SOHIP also assists the provincial and district governments to develop and install new protocols and mechanisms that address management and accountability issues. These take the form of bye-laws for example for District Health Management Teams, model of Three Years Rolling Plans for districts, course curricula on management and leadership, standards and protocols, operations manual for DHQ Hospitals etc.

Please see the following links to main management development results of SOHIP: