Barbara McPake is a health economist specialising in health policy and health systems research. She is one of two Research Directors of ReBUILD, a UK Department for International Development funded Research Programme Consortium on health systems development. In this video, she talks about the consortium’s work in building resilient and responsive health systems in conflict-affected states. ReBUILD is the first consortium on health systems to work in fragile and conflict-affected states, which is a really neglected area in current research and development practice. The consortium is made up of the following partners: the Institute for International Health and Development at Queen Margaret University, the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, the College of Medicine and Allied Health Sciences in Sierra Leone, Makerere University (http://mak.ac.ug/) in Uganda, the Cambodian Development Resource Institute, and the Biomedical Research Training Institute in Harare, Zimbabwe.
ReBUILD undertakes a programme of work that builds on the evidence from each country it works with to improve health policy and practice locally and globally. According to Professor McPake, what happens in the immediate post-conflict period is critical for how the health system will develop thereafter. What sets apart ReBUILD’s research from other health systems research is that it is based on a historical approach. As historical data in countries that have been affected by conflict are scarce, ReBUILD’s key research method is life histories, where data are gathered from health workers and users of health services about their whole life stories in relation to the health system.
ReBUILD’s main output has been the generation of a set of understandings that include local voices about the differences between the health systems in post-conflict settings and health systems in other countries which are currently being used to impact policy around health systems globally.
To learn more about ReBUILD’s work, click here to watch the HEART Talk on Comparing Responses to the Ebola Outbreak in Northern Uganda and Sierra Leone.
Twitter:
Follow ReBUILD – @ReBUILDRPC
Follow Barbara McPake – @bmcpake
Follow HEART – @HEART_RES
