Institutionalizing Explicit National Health Priority Setting - 2024

Introduction
This course focuses on processes used by countries to set health priorities that are reflected in national health policies. The course will review, among other topics:

• Why priority setting and linking priorities to plans and budgets matters.
• What is meant by institutionalizing explicit national priority setting, what elements a priority setting process is comprised of and the development of a framework to improve priority setting.
• How to engage stakeholders throughout the process, with country examples and references to tools for identifying and engaging stakeholders.
• What steps and approaches can be taken to help build stakeholder buy and consensus.

This course is an interactive, five module online self-study course; each module allows participants to engage with the materials and reflect on their own country’s context.

Purpose
To provide an overview of priority setting processes at the national level, the priority setting cycle, and stakeholder engagement.

Learning Objectives  
At the end of the course, the student will be able to:

• Describe the importance of institutionalizing explicit priority setting processes for the health sector. 
• Recognize key concepts and key sector terms.
• Identify practices that MOHs have used to institutionalize explicit processes for setting national health priorities. 
• Concrete actions MOHs can take to be a better partner to stakeholders involved in priority setting. 
• Identify priority-setting processes that users can adopt in their context.

Intended audience
Participants are anticipated to primarily be staff from Ministries of Health who are involved with, support or lead priority-setting processes for their countries’ respective health sector.   

Course modality
Self-learning course, free of charge, open to the public and without deadlines to complete it.

Duration
2 hours. The course is open and available in the Virtual Campus for Public Health (VCPH). As it is a self-learning course, participants can choose when they are able to progress through the course.

Course Structure
Module 1: Introduction  
Module 2: Priority setting cycle
Module 3: What can countries do to institutionalize stakeholder engagement throughout the priority- setting process?
Module 4: What can countries do to align plans and budgets?