Designup

Category: NEWS

  • Hosting Club Discussion on Mental Health Policy

    On December 16th Curatio International Foundation in partnership with UK-Georgia professional Network (UGPN) hosted policy club discussion on Mental Health policy issues.

    The meeting focused on development of recommendations for the improvement of the existing mental health service provision system in the country, specifically, how services should be organized on a primary health care level, in hospitals and shelters.

    The policy club discussion was organized in the framework of the “Strengthening Civil Society Capacity to Promote Research Evidence for Policy Development in Georgia” project aiming at building the skills of civil society organizations on improved provision of the evidence in policy making process. The project is implemented by the Curatio International Foundation with the financial support of Alliance for Health Policy and Systems Research (AHPSR) and Open Society Georgia Foundation (OSGF).

    Dr. Manana Sharashidze, the Chairman of the Georgian “Mental Health Coalition’ made a presentation that covered the issues like why mental health should be a priority policy issue for the government? Description of the current mental health system and problems deriving from this system; She also provided recommendations for the improvement and discussed expected results.

    Mr. Nikoloz Pruidze, the Deputy Minister of the Minister of LHSA informed participants the Georgian Government’s recent policy decision that for 2010 Health filed becomes the priority direction for the Government of Georgia (GoG). The Ministry of Labor, Health and Social Affairs (MoLHSA) in turn declared that mental health will be one of the top priorities for the MoLHSA. Therefore, Mr. Pruidze proposed to forge close cooperation around improving mental health system and the Ministry will appreciate very much relevant professional associations/experts input in it.

    It was agreed that the mental health associations/experts widely using international experience will develop detailed recommendations for improvement of the mental health service provision, which will be discussed and agreed with the MoLHSA to modify existing metal health policy accordingly.

  • Put Final Touches on the Training in Policy and Political Cycle

    Advent of the far reaching reforms era in Georgia surged a great demand in cross-sectoral collaboration between the government, civil society and the media to ensure production of high quality evidence and increased demand for evidence informed public policy formulation.

    As a continuous effort to improving capacities of NGOs on providing evidence in policy making process, Curatio International Foundation organized the gathering of 20 executives from leading local non-governmental organizations on Bazaleti, Georgia.The meeting became possible in the framework of the “Strengthening Civil Society Capacity to Promote Research Evidence for Policy Development in Georgia” project aiming at building the skills of civil society organizations on improved provision of the evidence in policy making process. The project is implemented by the Curatio International Foundation with the financial support of Alliance for Health Policy and Systems Research (AHPSR) and Open Society Georgia Foundation (OSGF).

    It is said that to influence policy one needs to know how it is developed.

    Therefore training course in Policy and Political Cycle has been designed to enhance capacity of participants in terms of employing evidence to engage effectively in policy making process. The main emphasis is placed on the understanding of agenda setting and policy formulation stages of the public policy formulation process.

    The training module consists of the two following parts:The first part of the training that held in the mid summer provided training participants more theoretical knowledge in evidence informed public policy formulation; the role of the Media in advocating the policy issue; public policy and budget cycle and formal framework of decision-making. The trainings were provided through employing highly qualified experts.

    While “fall” gathering -second part of the training further extended the topics related to health policy making in a more interactive mode. Group discussions and team presentations facilitated during this session provided a unique opportunity to participants to demonstrate that they are ready to apply gained knowledge in practice and have developed more specific skills to identify windows of opportunities to present evidence “just in time” and explain its policy implications that will allow them to be more effective participants in the policy process. Specifically:

    The second part was dedicated to a) presenting results of the baseline survey findings to discuss whether the partner NGO coalitions have sufficient skills, knowledge and social network to influence the policy in Georgia; 2 ) making presentation on one of the critical health sector reforms in Georgia – “Hospital Sector Reforms; 3) facilitating group discussions to understand and compare policy making in different political environments (e.g. Dictatorship—Chile; Electoral Democracies: Mexico & Columbia; Democratic regimes – the USA; and in Georgia), 4) agreeing on future interventions, which could lead to improving NGO coalitions capacity in producing and employing high quality evidence in policy making.

    In the framework of the project, two distinct networks of NGOs are gathered. At the ending part of the session alliance members shared their views and opinions on the health sector related topics that are of utmost importance and call for prompt civil society response.

    The organizations engaged in the course are:

    Georgian Young Lawyer’s Association (GYLA), Transparency International Georgia, Open Society Georgia Foundation (Soros Foundation national chapter), Association of Young Economists of Georgia (AYEG), Economic Policy Research Centre, Georgian Association for Mental Health (GAMH), Mental Health Coalition, Scientific Research Institute of Psychiatry, UK-Georgia Professional Network, Georgian Association for Psychosocial Aid “Ndoba”, Association of People in Need of Special Care (APNSC).

  • A New Paradigm for Regulating Georgian Pharmaceutical Market

    Curatio International Foundation in partnership with UK-Georgia professional Network (UGPN) conducted policy club discussion to increase awareness of the civil society organization regarding the Bill on Changes and Amendments to the Georgian Law on Drugs and Pharmaceutical Activities, which has been passed by the Parliament of Georgia 10th of August, 2009 and is effective from October 15, 2009. The draft Bill has been developed with the technical support of the CIF consultants under the auspices of the USAID funded CoReform project and has been modeled on procedures already in place in Europe. Therefore, the Bill introduces completely new approaches to the drug market regulation procedures in Georgia. The proposed new regulatory environment is expected to simplify drug registration procedures, improve access to safe drugs and promote market competitiveness.

    The demand for the Bill has been created by the fact that the share of imported drugs amounts to almost 90% in Georgian drug market, therefore, it became pivotal for GoG to pay special attention to import regulation and apply adequate instruments. For that reason policies relating to drugs and pharmaceuticals have increasingly been in spotlight in 2007 and 2008. The policy club discussion was organized in the framework of the “Strengthening Civil Society Capacity to Promote Research Evidence for Policy Development in Georgia” project aiming at building the skills of civil society organizations on improved provision of the evidence in policy making process. The project is implemented by the Curatio International Foundation with the financial support of Alliance for Health Policy and Systems Research (AHPSR) and Open Society Georgia Foundation (OSGF).

    Mr. Vakhtang Megrelishvili the lead CIF expert in 2007-2008, who assisted the GoG in draft Bill development, made a presentation for the civil society organizations covering the following important issues: a)background information; b) why the need for creation of a new regulatory environment for the pharmaceutical market has emerged; c) recommendations provided by the CIF experts to the GoG for improvement for the drug market regulation; d) excepted and rejected by the government recommendations; e) expected impacts of the Bill on the Georgia pharmaceutical market.

    The civil society organization expressed their interest and willingness to participate in the Bill execution monitoring process to observe how the Bill will affect pharmaceutical market.

  • CIF will Launch Fellowship for the Best Student of Healthcare/Public Health Management Faculty

    Are you a successful last year bachelor student of healthcare/public health management? If yes, you are posed a golden opportunity to be granted the fellowship worth around 250 GEL monthly.

    From 2009 CIF will start awarding fellowships to the most successful students of Healthcare organization/Public Health Management who are awaiting bachelor’s diploma from accredited Georgian universities. At the beginning the project will be piloted in the capital Tbilisi.

    CIF will grant 250 GEL monthly to one of the most successful students who is willing to pursue his/her career in healthcare/public health management on high benefit of this field. The effort will provoke motivation of students to become real professionals of health care/public health management. For promotion of fellowships CIF will boost special web page on its web site where the information about its fellows will be situated. The page will enable students to be exposed to the health care management student community and will contain useful for students links.

    CIF’s effort is the first ever to target bachelor’s students of Healthcare/Public Health management and aims to:

    Demonstrate successful bachelor student
    Promote specialization of Healthcare organization/Public health management

    Students will be selected based on the following criteria:

    Incumbent should be motivated to become professional of the selected job
    References of high education institution on the student

    Conditions of assigning fellowship:

    Fellowship will be assigned to one student once per year based on the selection process
    Fellowship amount comprises 250 GEL monthly
    Fellowship will be granted from the beginning of the academic year, September 1.

  • CoReform Project and the Ministry of Health Mark the Completion of the First Stage of Trainings on ICPC2 Application

    Today, July 24th the CIF under the auspices of the USAID funded CoReform project hosted the award ceremony dedicated to the completion of the first stage of the training course on Classifications for Hospital, Ambulatory and Laboratory interventions.

    30 Master Trainers from Primary Health Care Centers upon the training completion were honored to be awarded with special certificates in International Classification for Primary Care (ICPC 2) by Alexander Kvitashvili, the Minister of Labor, Health, and Social Affairs.

    Today’s closing event was preceded by series of trainings launched in May and aimed at delivering knowledge upon application of International Classification for Primary Care (ICPC 2) for ambulatory services. During 3 months period over 130 employees from 28 health care centers have been trained.

    The Minister in his greeting speech congratulated participants with completion of the course mentioning that “Continuous education is necessary for any specialist to grow professionally”. He also expressed his gratitude towards USAID for funding projects thus beneficial for Georgian community. “The recent visit of the US Vice President Joe Biden gave us the clear signal that US government stands with Georgia in undertaking any effort addressing political, economic or social issues. USAID on the behalf of the US government shows its support to development of these fields and this is very important for us. Initiatives it funds will lead to welfare of our citizens”, state the Minister. 

    Julian Simidjiyski, the Chief of Party of CoReform project from ABT Associates thanked the Minister for honoring the event and stressed the contribution of trainers. “Without their dedication this event would not have happened”, he said.

    George Khechinashvili, Program Management Specialist of the Office of Health and Social Development of the USAID Caucasus in his speech put special emphasis on the importance of the International Classifications for Medical Interventions for the country’s health sector and expressed his deep gratitude to the CoReform project, CIF and project experts in doing such an amazing job.

    As mentioned by the participants the training has turned out to be exceptionally beneficial for them in terms of content and efficient manner of delivering the information.

    “It is almost 10-11 years we have been participating in trainings provided in the field of health care, although none of the trainings have been as beneficial as this one. I deemed how we have been working without ICPC until today, how we managed to set priorities and how the process of reporting worked. Adoption of this system is extremely important for improving the performance of providers as well as their services”, said Rusudan Chitaishvili, on behalf of ALDAGI BCI Assistance.

    Trainings are still underway and by the end of September 40 health care professionals will be trained additionally. This time it will focus on NOMESCO Classification for Surgical Procedures (NCSP).

    Noteworthy, the Ministry has obtained the license for application of the ICPC 2 in Georgia. Currently the Ministry is proceeding with issuing the normative decree to make all classifications official national classifications.

  • Georgia HIS Strategic Plan posted on Health Metrics Network website

    HMN takes the initiative to publish HIS strategic plan produced by Curatio International Foundation on its website.

    The first baseline assessment of HIS was carried out in 2006 in East Georgia by Curatio International Foundation. It applied the HMN (Health Metrics Network) Framework as a guide and HMN Health Information System Situation Analysis Tool. The assessment results provided strong foundation to building a more comprehensive HIS development plan, which has been realized in the strategic plan.Development of Strategic Plan for the Development of Health Information Systems in Georgia became possible within the framework of a grant pledged by HMN.

    HMN has always been contributing to facilitation of active engagement of countries, development partners, technical agencies, and stakeholders through various means. In June 2009 HMN started publishing the results of all assessments and strategic plans on its own website. HMN management believes that sharing information is an important step towards better understanding of the context of the country and strengthening HIS. This will also solidify links between stakeholders and partners focusing on HIS reform issues.

    Follow the link to view the document

  • First Stage of Training Course on Evidence Informed Policy Formulation Crowned

    More than 20 executives from leading local and international non-governmental organizations in public policy formulation have successfully completed training workshop on ”Evidence Informed Policy”, on July 31-August 3, 2009 in Ureki, Georgia.

    The training workshop in Ureki was the first among a series of interventions under the recently launched project “Strengthening Civil Society Capacity to Promote Research Evidence for Policy Development in Georgia” ing at building the skills of civil society organizations on providing evidence in policy making process. The project is implemented by Curatio International Foundation with the financial support of Alliance for Health Policy and Systems Research (AHPSR) and Open Society Georgia Foundation (OSGF).

    Advent of the far reaching reforms era in Georgia surged a great demand in cross-sectoral collaboration between the government, civil society and the media to ensure production of high quality evidence and increased demand for evidence informed public policy formulation.

    On the light of this Curatio International Foundation has decided to gather two distinct networks of NGOs and strengthen their capacity in producing and communicating research findings, which can promote on- going interaction, collaboration and exchange of ideas between the research and decision-making communities which in turn can contribute to improved usage of evidence in decision-making.

    The workshop delivered by highly qualified experts covered a wide range of topics such as: Policy formulation, Stage model of policy formulation, Evidence-base policy formulation (by Marina Egutia, Project Manager at Curatio International Foundation) Frames of decision-making (by Bakur Kvashilava, the Dean of Law and Politics school at Georgian Institute of Public Affairs), Media and Policy Advocacy (by Rusudan Rukhadze, Executive Producer of Morning Programs at Georgian Public Broadcasting), Policy and Budget Cycle (by Sophie Lebanidze, Head of Health Care Department at the Ministry of Labor, Health and Social Affairs). The course provided participants the deep insight of sound evidence for raising issues on the political agenda, explained how and where the evidence is situated in the policy formulation process, how to effectively involve key players in the policy making etc.

    “I would like to wholeheartedly thank Curatio International Foundation for this opportunity. The organization managed to: 1) engage highly qualified trainers for each individual module; 2)ensure logical integration of the modules into a useful, coherent, intensive training course; 3) assemble the audience, whose relevant, active and insightful participation enhanced significantly the learning experience; and 4) deliver the whole package within an extremely conducive – supportive and free of distraction – environment”- stated Nikoloz Loladze, Vice-Chairman, Projects Director of UK-Georgia Professional Network (UGPN).

    The verbal feedbacks and acknowledgments from the first round show that the training helped the participants to better understand many critical issues of the policy formulation process and provided an opportunity to exchange experiences among colleagues.

    “Training was very successful, well organized, with extremely useful content and to the point. It is noteworthy that this event boosted information sharing and exchange of fresh ideas among non-governmental organizations and prepared sound grounding for further cooperation”- said Nino Kiknadze, Law, Media and Health Initiative Director at Open Society Georgia Foundation.

    As George Tsimintia, the Development Section Manager of Association of Young Economists of Georgia mentioned “…extremely interesting topics of training, together with outstanding trainers, participants and team of organizers brought sound knowledge and skills to respond and take up the current advocacy challenges of society…”

    Three days in informal environment of the beautiful setting, Ureki allowed participants from different fields to get as a team and encouraged establishment of sound links and partnerships among the organizations.

    “The effort was unique in many aspects. Firstly, organizers succeeded to effectively choose the time and environment. Time, because the information provided was very timely for further actions. Nice and calm environment created conditions that entirely embraced us in the learning process. Secondly, the way of selecting training participants was very interesting since it gathered top managers of leading non-governmental organizations. And the most importantly, the themes covered were new to us and well extracted. If, until today we have been acting intuitively, sometimes in a “wild” and chaotic manner today we have the knowledge and skills that will enable us to take effective steps for influencing decision-makers. These are trainings we would have been ready to pay for, and you’ve made such an exciting job by exposing us it for free”- Nino Makhashvili, Chairman of the Global Initiative on Psychiatry.

    “On my way to training I couldn’t have imagined that talks on public policy formulation, decision-making techniques, budgeting and issues of the kind could have been thus interesting in August, in a breathtaking and tempting environment located on the sea. But it seems timely…where as sweeping reforms are to be undertaken in many fields it is extremely important that civil society representatives conduct discussions and gain knowledge on public policy formulation, decision-making techniques, features of budget formulation, role of the media in policy formulation etc. You made this possible”- stated Nina Khatiskatsi, Program Director at Transparency International Georgia. Stay tuned for the upcoming training by the mid fall.

    The organizations engaged in the course are:

    Georgian Young Lawyer’s Association (GYLA), Transparency International Georgia, Open Society Georgia Foundation (Soros Foundation national chapter), Association of Young Economists of Georgia (AYEG), Economic Policy Research Centre, Georgian Association for Mental Health (GAMH), Mental Health Coalition, Scientific Research Institute of Psychiatry, UK-Georgia Professional Network, Georgian Association for Psychosocial Aid “Ndoba”, Association of People in Need of Special Care (APNSC).

  • Findings of Behavior Surveillance Surveys (BSS) to be Endorsed Soon

    Curatio International Foundation in collaboration with Infectious Diseases, AIDS and Clinical Immunology Research Center and Public Union Bemoni has carried out Behavior Surveillance Surveys with biomarker component among intravenous drug users (IDUs).

    The activity covered 5 Georgian regions -Tbilisi, Batumi, Gori, Zugdidi, Telavi. The effort became possible in the framework of the project “Establishment of evidence-base for national HIV/AIDS program by strengthening the HIV/AIDS surveillance system in the country” funded by the Global Fund. The survey was conducted using RDS methodology and included face-to-face interviews followed by blood testing on HIV and Syphilis.

    Findings will be introduced at the workshop which will gather representatives from Ministry of Labor, Health, and Social Affairs, National Center for Public Health and Disease Control, non-governmental organizations implementing preventing activities targeting IDUs and other stakeholders.

    The study reports will be unveiled in the mid fall.

    In the framework of the same project the sentinel surveillance among STI patients and Behavior Surveillance Surveys (BSS) with biomarker component among Commercial Sex Workers (CSWs), and Prisoners have been carried out.

  • The Study on System-wide Effects of the Global Fund on Georgia’s Health Care Systems posted on GHIN website

    The country case summary displayed on GHIN website was prepared as part of the academic consortium of the WHO Maximizing Positive Synergies between health systems and GHIs initiative. The study assesses the effects of the Global Fund funding on the health system in Georgia.

    It focuses on the policy environment, public-private interactions, human resources and access to HIV/AIDS services.

    The effects of Global Fund funding on Georgia’s health system were assessed in a two phase study conducted during 2004-2008. The study was part of the System Wide Effects of the Fund (SWEF) Network, which participates in the Global HIV/AIDS Initiatives Network (GHIN), where researchers explore the effects of Global Health Initiatives (GHI) on HIV/AIDS programs and health systems of the countries.

    The findings presented draw from a base-line survey implemented in 2004; the survey was carried out in 35 health facilities, in 26 districts, with a follow up study a year later.

    Follow the link to view the article.

  • Behavior Surveillance Survey among CSWs Covers Batumi and Tbilisi

    Curatio International Foundation together with Infectious Diseases, AIDS and Clinical Immunology Research Center and Association Tanadgoma carried out Behavior Surveillance Survey with biomarker component among CSWs.

    The survey targeted the capital Tbilisi and regional city Batumi, sampling 280 individuals. The study was conducted using TLS methodology and went through face-to-face interviews followed by blood testing.

    The activity was carried out in the framework of the Global Fund project “Establishment of evidence-base for national HIV/AIDS program by strengthening the HIV/AIDS surveillance system in the country”. Study results will be available in the late fall.

    In the framework of the same project the sentinel surveillance among STI patients and Behavior Surveillance Surveys with biomarker component among STI patients and Behavior Surveillance Surveys with biomarker component among Intravenous Drug Users (IDUs),and prisoners have been carried out.