Several LMICs have introduced publicly funded health insurance programs as central to their strategy to move closer to UHC. However, despite sometimes impressive increases in coverage, people continue to face major barriers to accessing -quality care due to a lack of information about benefits or challenges of navigating access to care. Likewise, grievance redressal arrangements may function poorly and participation of citizens in the design and oversight of insurance programmes is inadequate resulting in these programmes being often not designed in accordance with people’s needs.
In response to this, governments as well as civil society organizations (CSOs) have established a range of initiatives to empower citizens to realize their health insurance entitlements. These include initiatives around information provision, health provider navigation, help hotlines and grievance redressal mechanisms, and involving citizens in insurance oversight.
To better understand how these initiatives might be strengthened, the Alliance for Health Policy and Systems Research in collaboration with the WHO Health Financing Unit supported a programme of research to understand how a range of such initiatives have (or not) contributed to enabling citizens to exercise their health insurance entitlements.
This webinar will a) provide an overview of the research programme and illustrate key lessons gleaned across the countries; b) go in-depth into understanding how initiatives in Colombia, India and Indonesia have contributed to citizen empowerment and health insurance responsiveness and what remains to be done; and c) engage policy-makers, health financing experts and CSO representatives to reflect on key emergent themes.