Multi-stakeholder Hearing on Universal Health Coverage

On May 8 and 9, the multi-stakeholder hearings on health -including Universal Health Coverage - will take place at the UN Headquarters in New York. The hearing will provide an opportunity for all relevant stakeholders to contribute to the ongoing preparatory process for the High-Level Meeting, with a focus on the current state of efforts and top needs to accelerate response. The Communities at the Heart of UHC Campaign submitted the below statement for consideration at the hearing: 

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I am honored to speak on the behalf of the Communities at the Heart of UHC Campaign, which is working to ensure community health programming is integrated into national health systems, financially sustainable and rooted in quality. Our vision is recognition and commitment to community health programs across the UHC agenda.

 

Well-trained, well-paid community health workers (CHWs) are the backbone of strong primary healthcare and universal health coverage. To uphold quality of care, we must invest in CHWs, their pay, their training and mentorship, and ensure that CHWs are well equipped with adequate and necessary resources including commodities.

 

We echo UHC2030’s Action Agenda and we strongly support the inclusion of the following in the 2023 Political Declaration:

• Ensure gender equity in leadership roles, close the gender pay gap, and recognize and remunerate unpaid and underpaid health and care workers, including CHWs.

• Develop national plans for action and investment in the workforce to increase and sustain health financing and planning for job creation and the recruitment, development, compensation, standard professional training at entry point, and retention of the health workforce, particularly community health and primary care workers.

• Safeguard and protect the health and care workforce, including front-line and community health workers. Ensure health and care workers have necessary equipment to face challenges encountered by changing climate.

• Deliver integrated services that people trust and want to use by ensuring that the services are respectful, fully responsive, proactive and well managed, with reliable entry points in every community.

• Promote trust and transparency by strengthening accountability in health governance including ensuring communities have a voice in planning and budgeting processes.

 

We believe that only by strengthening the health and care workforce - including CHWs - to deliver high-quality health care can we achieve UHC. We affirm our commitment to working together to do so.

 

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