National Health System Basics

What are the objectives and functions of a national health system? 

In this short video, we describe how the objectives of a health system include three components: (1) to improve health and its fair distribution, (2) to ensure responsiveness to people’s needs, and (3) to protect people from impoverishing out of pocket health costs. We review the key functions of a health system (e.g., service delivery, workforce, products and technologies, information systems, financing, and governance), acknowledging they are deeply interrelated, and highlight cross-cutting themes like safety, quality, access, and coverage. Finally, we underscore the population’s multiple roles as consumers, taxpayers, citizens, and co-producers of health.