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With a focus on results from a variety of efforts to strengthen health systems in 35 countries around the globe, Partners for Health Reformplus (PHRplus) presented its end-of-project conference, “Better Health through System Strengthening” July 12 at the Ronald Regan Building in Washington, DC. The five-year, $98 million PHRplus project is the US Agency for International Development (USAID) flagship system strengthening project. The project applied state-of-the-art technical approaches to its assignments, built the capacity of counterpart individuals and organizations to address current and future health system issues, and promoted the engagement of stakeholders in problem definition, solution identification, and holding the system accountable for results.

The day-long end-of-project conference, attended by more than 100 people representing PHRplus partner organizations, USAID staff, and members of the global health community, highlighted results and lessons learned from a sample of project work. Topics featured included infectious disease surveillance and response and avian influenza, HIV/AIDS financing and human resource planning, community-based health financing impacts, hospital and primary care accreditation, and key tools for developing evidence-based decision making amongst others.

The initial panel welcome and panel discussion featured PHRplus Project Director Marty Makinen; USAID Health, Infectious Disease and Nutrition (HIDN) Health Systems Division Chief, Bob Emrey; Abt Associates Group Vice President Janet Ballantyne; and USAID’s Cognizant Technical Officer for PHRplus, Karen Cavanaugh. The keynote lunchtime speaker was Adnan Hyder of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. The event closed with comments by Richard Greene, head of the USAID HIDN unit.

Presentations from the event can be accessed from the agenda. Five PHRplus end-of-project reports are available below:

• Overview of Better Health Through System Strengthening
• Increasing Use of Reproductive, Maternal, and Child Health Services Through Health System Strengthening
• Responding to HIV/AIDS Through Health System Strengthening
• Infectious Disease Surveillance and Response Through Health System Strengthening
• Tools to Improve Decision-Making for Health