Introducing our report
Global Health Partnerships (formerly THET) was pleased to mark last years’ Universal Health Coverage (UHC) Day on 12 December 2024 with the launch of our report in UK Parliament: ‘Advancing Universal Health Coverage through Health Partnerships’.
Published just before the UK Government reduced the UK aid (ODA) budget to 0.3% of GNI in February 2025, this report could not be more timely. Now more than ever, it is imperative that we support the health workforce to continue to deliver vital health services.
The report highlights how Health Partnerships can be a force for advancing the UK’s domestic and Global Health Priorities, while supporting progress towards UHC. It shows how Health Partnerships are a cost-effective, mutually beneficial, and impactful driver of global health systems strengthening.
The report underscores the power of partnerships to build resilient health systems, through training health workers, improving service delivery, and expanding access to care. Interventions supported are carefully aligned with national health strategies, to ensure long-term impact through a sustainable model for health system strengthening.
Health workforce shortages are a major barrier to reaching UHC, with a projected shortfall of 10 million health workers by 2030. The report demonstrates how Health Partnerships are working to address this challenge by training health workers in LMICs, facilitating leadership development and bi-directional learning, and supporting ethical workforce migration policies to balance global health worker distribution.
The report also highlights the role of diaspora health workers in promoting global health equity. NHS staff with roots in LMICs play a vital role in Health Partnerships, bridging cultural and systemic gaps to improve health systems. The report emphasised the need to harness the expertise of diaspora health workers through structured NHS engagement programmes, highlighting how their contributions benefit both their home countries, and the UK.
With only 5 years left until the target date for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (2030), and progress currently in ‘peril’, the report emphasises that now is the time to act collectively to tackle the big challenges in health. We must leverage the power of partnerships to harness collective action, knowledge exchange, and collaboration between health workers across the globe, promoting innovative solutions to shared issues like workforce shortages, health system disparities, and barriers to care, in our mission of advancing progress towards Universal Health Coverage.
Key recommendations from the report to advance progress on UHC include:
- Reinstating the UK’s commitment to allocate 0.7% of its GNI to Official Development Assistance (ODA), with increased investments in global health workforce development.
- Incorporating Health Partnerships into the NHS England’s’s next 10-Year Health Plan and other key strategies to foster global learning and build a resilient health system domestically and internationally.
- Expanding digital health solutions, including telemedicine and electronic records, to reach underserved communities.
- Enhancing community health worker programs to improve access to healthcare in remote areas.
We are now facing a more complex environment of collectively tackle the big challenges in health – which threaten our own security but also require collaborative responses (as we have seen with COVID-19).
Our own experience at Global Health Partnerships (GHP) has shown us just how much learning there is to be gained from those partners by an NHS looking to innovate and do more with less. This report showcases and advocates for the importance of Health Partnerships in driving sustained global collaboration towards the attainment of Universal Health Coverage.
