Rural Health Project

closed

The objective of the Rural Health Project for China is to provide increased and more equitable access to quality health services, improved financial protection, and better management of public health threats in pilot provinces and counties, with lessons to support reforms in non-project areas. There are two components to the project. The first component is the health reform innovations supported via block grants. It will support innovations that can contribute lessons on practical approaches for implementing evolving government policies for health reform. Thus, the primary activity of the project is to pilot and then evaluate innovations in health reform. Forty counties will be included in the project. Four of them have been selected to prepare proposals for piloting at the outset of the project. Subsequently, more will be selected according to agreed criteria, including demonstration of commitment to reform and piloting innovations in line with the project concept documents, ability and capacity to lead and support innovations, and overall quality of proposals. The second component concerns project coordination, policy development, and lesson learning. This project coordination, policy development, and lesson learning component will aim to guide project implementation and identify replicable models for rural health reform. The combination of the reform orientation of the project and the use of innovation block grants for project funding will require new structures and processes for project management.