16.F. Workshop: Expanding coverage and improving quality: health reforms and policy learning across North America

Abstract

Abstract Health systems globally share challenges with expanding coverage while increasing quality. This workshop organized by the North American Observatory on Health Systems and Policies (NAO) will draw on the results of major health system studies of Canada, the United States (US) and Mexico. The NAO is a partnership of researchers, governments, and health organizations in the three countries, promoting evidence-informed health system policy decision-making. It works with the European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies and other global affiliates. One of the NAO's activities is co-publishing, with the European Observatory and the University of Toronto Press, full-length books about the health care systems in each of the three countries, modeled after the European Observatory's Health System in Transition (HiT) book series that includes full-length treatments of the systems in 70 countries. In 2020 new books will be jointly released in all three countries (Canada's third edition, the US's second, and Mexico's first). This workshop has two overarching Objectives first, to describe the recent health policy developments to provide insights into the successes and challenges of the three North American countries' health systems; second, to explore the potential for policy learning across the three countries with shared challenges but quite different institutional, political and economic contexts. Lead authors of each of these studies will deliver a short presentation describing the major public health and health system challenges faced in their country, and providing an analysis of recent health sector reforms. A panel discussion will follow, facilitated by the chairperson, that will start with a speaker that brings an international perspective to comment on the areas of convergence and divergence in health sector reforms in North America with those taking place across the European region. Each of the lead authors will then respond to the questions and comments raised, and will take questions and comments from the participants. This workshop brings together leading health system and public health scholars from Canada, the US, and Mexico for the first time at this international conference, which will provide participants with an opportunity to learn about these complex and ever-changing health systems and to engage in rich and lively discussion. Key messages In-depth health system studies provide the opportunity to identify lessons that may be transferable across national boundaries. Comparing recent health reforms in the three largest North American countries provide insight into policy learning across high- and middle- income contexts.