LIST OF PANELS

Background
With the SDG of Universal Health Coverage, captured by "leaving no one behind", there is a renewed impetus to work collaboratively at the local level. Public and private providers could work jointly to improve the performance of fragmented urban health systems and to improve referral for maternal care. Collaboration across sectors may, for instance, attenuate the triple burden of disease and contribute to implement tobacco control policies at district level. Collaboration between health facilities and the police may to strengthen integrated service networks for victims of sexual violence. Schools and youth services working together may deliver stigma free health services for adolescents. Community-based organisations and health managers and providers may engage in joint priority-setting and better align health services to citizens’ and communities’ needs.
 
Research question
How do collaborative governance arrangements impact on existing health inequities in LMIC?
 
Objectives
This session aims at showcasing examples from recent empirical fieldwork in LMIC of a renewed impetus in improved collaborative governance within the broader goal of achieving universal health coverage and to explore how these formal and informal governance arrangements and practices at the level of the local (health) system might impact on accountability towards the poorest or most vulnerable groups (indigenous groups, socially excluded, single households, people with disabilities, the poorest,..), who cannot easily claim nor enforce accountability.
 
Scientific relevance
Any policy, programme (or applied research) intervention to advance universal health coverage has to pass the litmus test of its impact on health (and broader) inequities. The aim is to explore empirical examples and then discuss, on the basis of the papers, which mechanisms are at work, in which context and why. The panel will end with making the case for innovative research methods (such as realist evaluation, qualitative comparative analysis,…) which allow for the building of causal pathways.

Papers expected: exploratory case-studies of innovative policy, programme or research interventions; empirical testing of (often HIC-developed) collaborative governance theories in LMIC settings; use of innovative research methods to explain the interaction between governance mechanisms and LMIC contexts, e.g. challenging operational settings; exploration of possible pathways linking micro and meso level collaborative governance arrangements to 'macro' structural drivers of (health) inequities and effects on vulnerable groups and /or poorest (indigenous groups, socially excluded, single households, people with disabilities, the poorest,..)

Research question: How do collaborative governance arrangements impact on existing health inequities in LMIC?
 
Hypotheses: To achieve universal health coverage, specific measures will need to be taken to ensure that those "who are left behind" are included. Collaborative governance mechanisms could either attenuate or reduce health inequities through amplifying feedback loops that reduce social exclusion and accountability failures vis à vis vulnerable groups or through disrupting feedback loops which maintain the status quo.
 
We invite papers that present exploratory case studies of innovative policy, programme or research interventions; report on  collaborative governance theories applied in low- and middle-income settings; use innovative research methods to explain the interaction between governance mechanisms and LMIC contexts, e.g. challenging operational settings; explore possible pathways linking micro- and meso-level collaborative governance arrangements to macro-level structural drivers of (health) inequities and effects on vulnerable groups and /or poorest (indigenous groups, socially excluded, single households, people with disabilities, the poorest,..).