Dr. Katherine Ann Reyes, Assistant Professor in the Department of Health Policy and Administration and Associate Dean for Research of UP Manila College of Public Health shared the Philippine experience during the webinar entitled “COVID-19: HPSR is Crucial for an Evidence-Based Response” held last 25 June 2020 and hosted by the Institute for Health Systems Research (IHSR), Malaysia. 

The webinar aimed to discuss how HPSR can have a role  in an effective COVID-19 response. According to Dr. Zulkarnain Abdul Karim, senior researcher and head of the IHSR Center for Health Services Research, HPSR delves into how health systems are organized, financed, governed, to attain health outcomes; and who drives these processes including  how these are being done. HPSR facilitates understanding of the dynamics and complexity for improving and strengthening health systems.

Dr. Reyes stated that the Philippines’ prior experiences with disease outbreaks have somehow helped the country improve its surveillance system as well as come up with preparedness plans. The Philippines also capitalized on having a mechanism to mobilize an inter-agency governance structure that was designed to coordinate a national level response.  In the early phase of COVID-19, this was confined to internal technical groups within the government. There was also no formal  multi-disciplinary research plan agenda issued to support the evidence need of the national response. She acknowledged that there is still a lot to be done in terms of applying HPSR to the COVID-19 response. 

According to Dr. Reyes, the health systems approach was already in place during the Universal Health Care (UHC) implementation but was interrupted when COVID-19 hit the Philippines in January 2020. On the role of research in supporting health system reform, there is a section in the UHC law that mentions this. Dr. Reyes attributes this to years of efforts to strengthen the country’s research infrastructure, first for biomedical research, the clinical research, and lately on HPSR. 

With COVID-19, putting everything into the context of a health system is still a challenge. She recounted for instance, that it was only in April that a wider  discussion on health system function – testing capacity, bed availability, quarantine facilities, PPEs and other vital information became mainstream. She acknowledged that getting data was not as fast as should be. Timely and quality information is required for more accurate projections on how to  strengthen the health system response to COVID-19.

“We had health scientists, epidemiologists, public health data scientists, statisticians, and mathematicians but there was limited participation of the social scientists. Our experience with the UHC urges us to respond to COVID-19 in a way that would be guided by science; but we also need to examine which science is able to participate and which ones have a link to policymaking and can speak to the decision-makers,” Dr Reyes pointed out.

The health policy expert said the Philippines has yet to establish a mechanism of linking evidence to policies, as found in other countries like the rapid evidence synthesis capacity that is well recognized and accepted within governments. We currently have  a limited and generally ad-hoc capacity, particularly as demonstrated during the COVID-19 pandemic. She stressed the need to consider how different sectors view evidence and how different disciplines can help in ensuring that we  frame our policy problems in a way that will be helpful for the country to identify and address the most important  policy issues. 

The other webinar panelists were Professor of European Public Health at London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) Martin McKee who spoke for the United Kingdom, Dr. Awatef Amer Nordin of IHSR for Malaysia, and Dr. Dina Balabanova also of LSHTM who presented the HPSR competencies developed from over three years of consultation with key world leaders.This webinar is part of an multi-country project on HPSR strengthening where UP Manila is also a collaborator.

Charmaine Lingdas and Cynthia Villamor
Published in Healthscape Special COVID-19 Issue No. 11