Health governance and policies

HEALTH GOVERNANCE AND POLICIES
Name
Health and Medicine
Course
Date of Submission
Health governance and policies
Governance is considered to be the major determinant of overall development, social advancement and economic growth in all sectors of government such as health, education, agriculture, transport and infrastructure. United Nation Development Programme (UNDP) defines governance as "the exercise of administrative authority, economic and political in the running of country’s affairs at all levels". Therefore, governance does not involve government affair alone. It requires all actors in the society to participate in promoting good governance across all sector of the public. According to former Secretary General of the United Nations, Kofi Annan good governance is the only strategic of alleviating poverty and improving development of a country. Governance is the combination of different factors that include; multifaceted mechanism, institution and process through which stakeholders comes together to express their interest and articulate on their difference as well as exercising their obligations and legal rights.
Literature has talked a lot about governance on other sectors of economy such as education, agriculture, roads and infrastructure. However, health sector has not received much attention from the researchers. Health sector is one of the integral part affecting the development and wellbeing of the population of a country. Health system governance is therefore regarded as means and action through which the societies strategize themselves in order to achieve the health population. To achieve good governance, proper policies need to be put in place such as informal and formal policies that govern the behavior and organization policies that would govern the important functions of the health sector (Dodgson et al., 2002). The formulation of Health in All Policies (HiAP) was intended to boost the realization of good governance in the health sector CITATION Sta06 \l 1033 (Stahl, T. and Wismar, M., 2006).
Health Impact Assessment (HIA) is an important step needed to be undertaken in order to ascertain the effectiveness and challenges facing health governance. This is the process of developing the structures required in the course of formulating health policies. According to WHO European Centre for Health Policy (1999), health impact assessment is defines as "a combination of procedures, methods and tools by which a policy, program or project may be judged as to its potential effect on the health of a population, and the distribution of those effects within the population". Therefore, HIA is the tool used to determine the potential impacts that a proposed policy can have on the population health. However, it is not an evaluative method; rather it’s a means of increasing awareness and knowledge of the stakeholders so as to make the right decisions regarding the policies of health sectors and ...