Communication and Advocacy in Action: Building Momentum for Universal Health Coverage

The project implements strategies to increase domestic resources for health, manage those resources effectively, and make wise purchasing decisions. HFG collaborates with health stakeholders to protect families from catastrophic healthcare costs, expand access to priority services, and ensure equitable population coverage. Key components of the HFG project include improving financing by mobilizing domestic resources, reducing financial barriers, expanding health insurance, and implementing provider payment systems. The project also enhances governance for better health system management and greater accountability and transparency. Additionally, HFG improves management and operations systems to advance the delivery and effectiveness of healthcare, and advances techniques to measure progress in health systems performance, especially around universal health coverage. The HFG project is funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and is led by Abt Associates in collaboration with several other organizations. The project's Advances in Health Finance & Governance series is designed to highlight learning and lessons from the HFG project in nine core areas, including domestic resource mobilization, strategic health purchasing, and building understanding for universal health coverage. Despite strong global commitment to achieving universal health coverage (UHC), inconsistent understanding and communication about UHC hinders progress. The HFG project suggests that advocating for and communicating about UHC requires deliberate, tailored, context-specific strategies. Effective strategic communication for UHC includes a clear definition of UHC, technical knowledge, communication expertise and resources, and tailored messaging, opposition management, and continuous adaptation. Strategic communication about or for UHC involves coordinated, multi-party outreach and actions intended to inform, influence, or persuade key audiences to support UHC. This requires specific skills like negotiation, persuasion, and opposition management, as well as dedicated human resources, financial resources, and technology. Examples from the HFG project include a coordinated UHC campaign in Bangladesh, mediation dialogue in Ethiopia, and stakeholder engagement in Guinea. The HFG project has supported efforts to improve understanding of UHC and accelerate progress toward UHC in Africa and Asia. Through this work, the project has identified emerging lessons on how to build understanding of UHC and how to deploy this knowledge through strategic communication to advocate more effectively for UHC.