TY - JOUR
T1 - Integrated health service delivery during COVID-19
T2 - A scoping review of published evidence from low-income and lower-middle-income countries
AU - Hasan, Md Zabir
AU - Neill, Rachel
AU - Das, Priyanka
AU - Venugopal, Vasuki
AU - Arora, Dinesh
AU - Bishai, David
AU - Jain, Nishant
AU - Gupta, Shivam
N1 - Funding Information:
Funding This work was supported by the Indo-German Social Security Programme, GIZ India Grant Number #81251835. Competing interests None declared. Patient consent for publication Not required. Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed. data availability statement Data sharing not applicable as no datasets generated and/or analysed for this study. No additional data are available. This study is developed from publicly available secondary data. The scoping review is registered on OSF.io with the Registration DOI 10.17605/OSF.IO/KY9PX (osf.io/yk7gu).
Publisher Copyright:
© Author(s) (or their employer(s)) 2021. Re-use permitted under CC BY. Published by BMJ.
PY - 2021/6/16
Y1 - 2021/6/16
N2 - Background Integrated health service delivery (IHSD) is a promising approach to improve health system resilience. However, there is a lack of evidence specific to the low/lower-middle-income country (L-LMIC) health systems on how IHSD is used during disease outbreaks. This scoping review aimed to synthesise the emerging evidence on IHSD approaches adopted in L-LMIC during the COVID-19 pandemic and systematically collate their operational features. Methods A systematic scoping review of peer-reviewed literature, published in English between 1 December 2019 and 12 June 2020, from seven electronic databases was conducted to explore the evidence of IHSD implemented in L-LMICs during the COVID-19 pandemic. Data were systematically charted, and key features of IHSD systems were presented according to the postulated research questions of the review. Results The literature search retrieved 1487 published articles from which 18 articles met the inclusion criteria and included in this review. Service delivery, health workforce, medicine and technologies were the three most frequently integrated health system building blocks during the COVID-19 pandemic. While responding to COVID-19, the L-LMICs principally implemented the IHSD system via systematic horizontal integration, led by specific policy measures. The government's stewardship, along with the decentralised decision-making capacity of local institutions and multisectoral collaboration, was the critical facilitator for IHSD. Simultaneously, fragmented service delivery structures, fragile supply chain, inadequate diagnostic capacity and insufficient workforce were key barriers towards integration. Conclusion A wide array of context-specific IHSD approaches were operationalised in L-LMICs during the early phase of the COVID-19 pandemic. Emerging recommendations emphasise the importance of coordination and integration across building blocks and levels of the health system, supported by a responsive governance structure and stakeholder engagement strategies. Future reviews can revisit this emerging evidence base at subsequent phases of COVID-19 response and recovery in L-LMICs to understand how the approaches highlighted here evolve.
AB - Background Integrated health service delivery (IHSD) is a promising approach to improve health system resilience. However, there is a lack of evidence specific to the low/lower-middle-income country (L-LMIC) health systems on how IHSD is used during disease outbreaks. This scoping review aimed to synthesise the emerging evidence on IHSD approaches adopted in L-LMIC during the COVID-19 pandemic and systematically collate their operational features. Methods A systematic scoping review of peer-reviewed literature, published in English between 1 December 2019 and 12 June 2020, from seven electronic databases was conducted to explore the evidence of IHSD implemented in L-LMICs during the COVID-19 pandemic. Data were systematically charted, and key features of IHSD systems were presented according to the postulated research questions of the review. Results The literature search retrieved 1487 published articles from which 18 articles met the inclusion criteria and included in this review. Service delivery, health workforce, medicine and technologies were the three most frequently integrated health system building blocks during the COVID-19 pandemic. While responding to COVID-19, the L-LMICs principally implemented the IHSD system via systematic horizontal integration, led by specific policy measures. The government's stewardship, along with the decentralised decision-making capacity of local institutions and multisectoral collaboration, was the critical facilitator for IHSD. Simultaneously, fragmented service delivery structures, fragile supply chain, inadequate diagnostic capacity and insufficient workforce were key barriers towards integration. Conclusion A wide array of context-specific IHSD approaches were operationalised in L-LMICs during the early phase of the COVID-19 pandemic. Emerging recommendations emphasise the importance of coordination and integration across building blocks and levels of the health system, supported by a responsive governance structure and stakeholder engagement strategies. Future reviews can revisit this emerging evidence base at subsequent phases of COVID-19 response and recovery in L-LMICs to understand how the approaches highlighted here evolve.
KW - COVID-19
KW - health services research
KW - health systems
KW - public health
KW - review
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85108106676&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85108106676&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1136/bmjgh-2021-005667
DO - 10.1136/bmjgh-2021-005667
M3 - Review article
C2 - 34135071
AN - SCOPUS:85108106676
SN - 2059-7908
VL - 6
JO - BMJ Global Health
JF - BMJ Global Health
IS - 6
M1 - 005667
ER -