Launching Lifelong Health by Improving Health Care for Children, Youth, And Families presents a vision for transforming the child and adolescent health care system. This report also examines how the health care system can be better positioned to equitably address the needs of all children and families and leverage community supports. This requires transforming key components, such as health care financing, public health investment, community partnerships, and accountability strategies, to encourage team-based care delivery models and attention to and health promotion, prevention, and root causes of health disparities.

The articles in this issue highlight the importance of regular health systems performance assessment to inform policies that advance progress on health system objectives globally, and offer insights on associated data, methods and applications.

Sara Machado Ph.D. uses the HSPA framework to examine the health policy propositions being debated by parties in the 2024 Portuguese legislative elections.

Americans pay more for brand-name prescription medications than do residents of most other countries, with per capita spending on pharmaceuticals nearly three times the average of other member nations of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). In 2022, high costs forced one of five U.S. adults age 65 and older to skip or delay filling a prescription, miss or reduce doses, or use someone else’s medication. More than half of patients resort to cost-coping strategies like coupons or free samples so they can get the medications they need but cannot afford. Such stopgap measures can have particularly serious consequences for older people who rely on medications to control chronic health conditions.

Davos, Switzerland — Findings from an ongoing research collaboration between FOUR, LinkedIn, CHeSS, and the VA on the AI workforce in health were featured in a session at the World Economic Forum on January 18, 2024.

The key messages of this policy brief published by the European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies are as follows:
- Health systems performance assessment (HSPA) is about helping decision-makers to work through performance challenges in context, that is, in light of what drives their own health system and its outcomes, to make better informed choices about change.
- Health systems have porous boundaries but act on wider societal goals through a complex iteration of functions, intermediate objectives and goals.
- The global HSPA Framework is based on the consensus reached by a coalition of countries, key stakeholders and civil society coordinated by WHO (UHC2030). It reflects a rigorous review of existing tools by the UHC2030 Technical Working Group on Health System Assessments, which included Member States, global health organizations, key players like the European Commission, the OECD and the World Bank, donors and academia, and agreed a harmonized approach to assessment.
- The new elements of the framework are about learning from the pandemic and bringing to the fore those existing elements that proved particularly policy- relevant. These include the following.
- The health system plays a significant role in contributing to larger societal objectives and to well-being, for example by fostering cohesion and supporting economic development.

COVID-19 has demonstrated the serious threat pandemics pose to both health and health systems. Pandemic preparedness plans are key strategic tools that enable policymakers to limit the severity of a disease outbreak but plans also need to build resilience into the health system to withstand pandemic shocks.

Health system performance assessment can be applied to pandemic preparedness planning to identify those strategies that improve health system resilience.

Which pandemic preparedness strategies strengthen health system resilience? Can health system strengthening and pandemic preparedness align? How can we use health system performance assessment to support pandemic preparedness? Join us to find out!