Building future-proof health care systems

All of us will require health care services at some point of our lives. How a health care system functions is dependent on politics (resource allocation, legislation), workforce (human resources, medical education), technology (new devices and medicines), risk-benefit assessment (epidemiology, regulation), cost-benefit (economics), priority setting and vulnerable populations (sociology), and the right to health and dignity (ethics). As such, this village is truly interdisciplinary. Students will get to think big and come up with solutions to their chosen problem facing health systems around the world. The goal of this village is to expose students to evidence-based policymaking and develop their systems-level thinking.

Relevant competency 

As a highly interdisciplinary course, we welcome students from medical and public health sciences, design, political science, sociology, anthropology, law, psychology, education, economics, accounting, data science, statistics, business, communications, engineering, informatics, and other disciplines.

Teaching method

Hybrid: In this village there will be a mix of classroom and online teaching. Students must have a computer with camera and microphone.

About the village 

Achieving universal access to health care around the globe remains on the Sustainable Development Goals Agenda (goal 3.8). While developing countries are disproportionately faced with access to basic health care to avoid preventable diseases and deaths, health systems in industrialized countries – despite universal health coverage – are faced with rapidly aging populations, chronic disease, and budget constraints which hampers access to care. In parallel, the rise of mobile health solutions place a wealth of health information directly in people’s hands – with the potential to both empower and misinform. Meanwhile, ‘big data’, including algorithms based on artificial intelligence (AI) and blockchain data bring their own unique challenges to health system administrators and policymakers alike. 

The coronavirus pandemic has highlighted the vital role that health systems play in our society. Importantly, it emphasized that health systems are larger entities that extend just beyond the walls of hospitals and doctors’ offices; they also depend on a solid public health system to carry out disease surveillance and make predictions on infection control, as well as increasingly rely on telehealth and digital care solutions. To attain a functioning health care system, countries need legal frameworks to ensure that the right to health is realized for all segments of the population, including indigenous groups, individuals with disabilities, immigrants, and others. It also needs a prioritization system for making hard choices about which services and new technologies (including medicines) to pay for, for whom, how, when, and for how long. 

This village lets you work together to define a health care system challenge in a country of your choosing and come up with evidence-based recommendations based on policies in other comparable countries, through established methods. After learning about the policy-making process, students develop a final product: A policy brief which showcases the best available evidence to support their recommendations. Such policy briefs are commonly used when presenting arguments for or against new policies or policy reforms, to summarize the available options for busy legislators who do not have the time to read long and in-depth materials. The projects will require creativity, flexibility, precise communication, and the ability to juggle between depth (i.e. technical knowledge) and breadth (i.e. systems thinking). 

In previous years, students have worked on projects in European countries such as Norway and the UK, or in low-and-middle income countries such as Bangladesh and Malawi. Topics have ranged from ensuring policies to prevent intensive care nurse burnout, tobacco legislation, preventing opioid overdoses, ensuring acceptability of vaccines among immigrant populations, and reducing the impact of climate change on child health. Student teams can define their own problems, however, with possibilities ranging from digital and mobile-based health care, health education and communication, personalized medicine, genetic screening, elder care, or a range of other topics. 

During the course, students will have access to external experts from national and international organizations to provide insights to source materials, feedback on project conceptualization, or for interviews. In previous years, project external advisors have included those from international NGOs, think-tanks, academic researchers, Ministries of Health – from Europe, the U.S. and African countries.

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