Cross-posted from [reprohealth] <ttran3@worldbank.org>
Call for Applications for the Redesigned Health Outcomes and the Poor e-learning Course in English
DURATION AND COURSE LOAD: 6 Weeks - 8 to 10 hours per week
DATES: 6 May - 17 June 2009
APPLICATION DEADLINE: 25 March 2009
PARTICIPANTS: (Health) Professionals involved in the Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers process either as PRSP authors or as advisors to the government REGIONS TARGETED: Global COURSE FEE: $500
ORGANIZERS: The World Bank Institute
LANGUAGE: English only
GENERAL COURSE CONTACT: Jo Hindriks at jhindriks@worldbank.org
For more information please go to our website:
http://www.worldbank.org/wbi/healthandaids/elearning
Click on the "Health Outcomes and the Poor" link to see more information and a link to the application form.
Some quotes of our past participants:
*"I really liked the learning experience. I had expected that an online course will be a passive learning experience, instead, it was interesting, inspiring, with vibrant communication with other participants, the trainers provided feedback, it was not passive at all! I really wish I had been able to keep up for the entire time. (...) I am amazed at how incredibly well the course used the advantages of technology."
*"I am about to write on the relevance and recommendations of a women's health and economic empowerment initiative, and what I have learnt here will enable me do it brilliantly!"
*"Thank you very much for this course. It has helped to solidify for me so much of my daily work and made many concepts more clear."
*"You always led us to think a bit more practical and more structured. I learned a lot and my thoughts have been restructured in my head through this course. You provided us with very good tools."
BACKGROUND OF THE COURSE:
In the years since the launch of the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper process (International Monetary Fund 1999 and World Bank 2000), many countries have taken on the challenge of centering their development agenda around poverty reduction and have engaged in consultative and analytical work to support policy development. The majority of them have developed and published Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers.
Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs) are prepared through a participatory process involving domestic stakeholders as well as external development partners, including the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. Updated every three years with annual progress reports, PRSPs describe the country's macroeconomic, structural and social policies and programs over a three year or longer horizon to promote broad-based growth and reduce poverty, as well as associated external financing needs and major sources of financing. Interim PRSPs (I-PRSPs) summarize the current knowledge and analysis of a country's poverty situation, describe the existing poverty reduction strategy, and lay out the process for producing a fully developed PRSP in a participatory fashion. One of the main features of the PRSP process is an emphasis on country leadership and ownership.
This means that there is no set template or framework for countries to follow. Moreover, there is no guarantee that health would even be addressed in each PRSP as the decision on which sectors to include is entirely up to the authors (typically the government). The absence of an imposed structure or format by the International Financial Institutions increases the likelihood of country ownership and that the strategies identified address the real needs of each country. Moreover, the lack of an imposed structure may lead to more individualized and creative approaches. On the other hand, the lack of a consistent structure among the documents makes it difficult to systematically review health inputs and compare documents.
Since there are no set guidelines or rules to write PRSPs there is clearly an advantage in learning from past attempts at writing them. This six-week course is intended to fill a need for training on what some of the options are for writing the health component of the Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers. The key question is: "What is the basic relationship between poverty and Health, Nutrition and Population (HNP) and how do they influence each other?" Understanding this relationship will improve the quality of the Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers and will result in improved health outcomes for the poor. This course will attempt to diagnose, analyze and identify some pro-poor actions that could be recommended to achieve the intended outcomes.
Objectives
The overall course objective is to improve the health of the poor and vulnerable through analytical work that leads to pro-poor policies, actions and expenditures.
The operational objectives are to assist PRSP authors to improve the analysis and the policies in the health sector; and PRSP reviewers to advise authors on how to improve the quality of health inputs into PRSPs.
COURSE STRUCTURE
The course is structured along the logical framework underlying the PRSP sourcebook chapter on health. The diagram Pathways to Improved Health Outcomes outlines the relationships between the actors inside and outside the Health Sector which influence the health outcomes.
The course will be organized in an Introduction and five interlinked
modules:
Introduction to the 'Pathways to Improved Health Outcomes' diagram Module 1: Outcomes Module 2: The roles and constraints of households and communities Module 3: Factors beyond the health sector Module 4: The health system (delivery and financing) Module 5: An Integrated Policy Framework
COURSE FORMAT
You will take this course entirely through the internet (World Wide Web).
Upon acceptance as participant you will be given access to the course site. The format of the course relies heavily on 'action learning' which means that you will be required to actively participate in all online activities, which will mainly consist of reading the course content and posting assignments and reacting to other participant's postings. As most of the weeks' assignments are based on team work and joint products, it is imperative that you are able to log in and work on the course regularly so that your team can effectively produce the team products, and that you can adhere to deadlines. There will be minimum participation requirements to qualify for receiving a completion certificate.
The working language of the course will be English. Because of the nature of internet based learning, you will have to have good to excellent English writing skills, since all the communication within the course will be in written format.
Since this is an e-learning course there will be no travel involved. We require that you be able to set aside 8 to 10 hours per week to devote to the training. It is important that you get your manager's approval for this time commitment prior to applying to this course. We advise spreading the workload out over the week, working everyday on it for an hour or two, rather than doing it all in one day. This will enable you to actively participate in all discussions and respond to your fellow participants' postings in a timely manner and thus satisfying the completion requirements for this course.
The course targets (health) professionals involved in the Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers process either as PRSP authors or as advisors to the governments. It focuses on people working on PRSPs, either in the countries writing them or in agencies that are assisting in the writing or who are reviewing/assessing the documents.
APPLICATIONS
On behalf of the course organizers, we take great pleasure in inviting you, or a member of your staff, to participate in this event. Please feel free to forward this announcement to anyone you think might be interested to participate or nominate a participant.
We would also like to invite you to nominate participants from countries you work with. We are particularly interested in receiving nominations from the country PRSP teams, Ministries of Health, Finance/Planning, Women's Affairs, Parliament, etc, as well as NGOs, private sector organizations, the donor community and others working in this field. We encourage teams from each country to participate and collaborate in this course.
APPLICATION DEADLINE: 25 March 2009
Please apply online for this offering at:
http://info.worldbank.org/etools/wbi_learning/activity.cfm?sch_id=HNP09-01-242
NOTA BENE:!!!! Make sure you copy the entire URL, starting from "http" to " =HNP09-01-242 " Some email clients insert linebreaks which will cause the above link to malfunction. Just copy and paste everything into your browser's address bar to remedy this situation. If you still have problems locating the electronic application form, please send an email to jhindriks@worldbank.org.
Upon acceptance you will receive information how to log on to the course.
FEES
The fee for this course is $500.
For any other information contact
Jo Hindriks
mailto:jhindriks@worldbank.org