The Medicines and Insurance Coverage (MedIC) Initiative is a unique partnership between academics, health care delivery systems, health care financing institutions, and international organizations. We seek to improve population health through evidence-informed medicines policies and programs in health systems, with a particular focus on emerging and expanding insurance schemes in low and middle-income countries (LMIC) working toward universal health coverage.
MedIC Activities
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Capacity strengthening for medicines policy and program development in LMIC systems
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Collaborative applied policy research on medicines management, programs, and policies in health care delivery and financing systems
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Advancing methods for monitoring and evaluating impacts of medicines management, programs, and policies
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Networking and sharing knowledge, experiences, and tools for evidence-informed decision making
MedIC Trainings
Background
As countries reform their health systems and work toward universal health coverage (UHC), decision-makers must ensure that money spent on medicines achieves desired health outcomes and is not wasted. To do so, all stakeholders must understand the importance of appropriate medicines use; its relationship to access to medicines and to household and system affordability of medicines, and thus to achieving the goals of UHC; and the potential of medicines coverage policies under UHC to incentivize appropriate as well as unintended inappropriate use. Decision-makers thus need the capacity to take advantage of the levers of expanding universal health coverage schemes – information on members and providers; and targeted medicines policy and program options – and evidence on the impacts of different policy options to improve equitable, affordable (for households and the system) access to appropriately used quality medicines for their populations.
Objectives
We offer modular programs to strengthen the capacity for evidence-based policy decisions among executive leaders and operational staff in key stakeholder organizations, including health care and health financing institutions.
Target Audiences
The target audiences for MedIC trainings are executive leaders and operational staff of stakeholder institutions. Executive leaders include chief executives, directors, and operating, financial, medical, pharmacy, and information officers of secondary and tertiary care hospitals, health insurance programs, and government departments responsible for implementing health reform as well as leaders of multinational and local pharmaceutical companies. Operational staff include teams from pharmacy, clinical medicine, insurance, financial, and information technology departments of hospitals and insurance programs, the government, as well as industry.
Design
Highly interactive modules are developed to meet the needs of target audiences. Course activities consist of small and large group case discussions and small group hands-on analyses of health care organization and insurance scheme data. Participants focus on a specific medicines policy issues relevant to their systems and develop team projects for implementation after the course. The course language is usually English; conducting courses in other languages is possible. To allow for interactive discussion, executive staff training programs are usually limited to 50 participants and operational staff trainings to about 40.
Selected MedIC Course Topics
MedIC Course participants and facilitators address a broad range of questions that arise when making evidence-based medicines policy decisions, including:
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Why cover medicines in health insurance schemes?
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How to select populations, indications, medicines, and levels of cost for coverage?
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How to design medicines management programs and benefit policies?
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How to use existing data to generate evidence on medicines utilization and cost in systems?
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How to collect data ad-hoc on household medicines use, affordability, perceptions?
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How to monitor and evaluate impacts of medicines policies in systems?
Please click on the links below to learn more about past MedIC trainings.
MedIC Initiative Courses
MedIC Course in Jakarta, Indonesia, May 2013
MedIC Course in Beijing, China, March 2009
MedIC Course in Accra, Ghana, November 2008
MedIC Course in Manila, Philippines, September 2007
Principal Investigator: Anita Katharina Wagner
Funder(s): Funders of MedIC training activities include the Beijing Xuanwu Hospital, the Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute, the Harvard China Fund, the Shanghai Shenkang Hospital Development Center, the UK Department for International Development, the Novartis AG, and WHO country and regional offices.
Related Links
Medicines Coverage – Access and Value, a presentation at Medicines as Part of Universal Health Coverage: Starting a Dialogue
Universal Health Coverage & Medicines: Considerations for Policy Decisions, a Joint Learning Network webinar
Related resources
Management Sciences for Health – Medicines as Part of Universal Health Coverage