About the Quality Toolkit
The WHO Quality Toolkit: Navigating tools to improve the quality of health services helps easy identification and access to a wide range of WHO published materials to improve the quality of health services. These tools support the actions described in the Quality health services: a planning guide, which outlines a structured, systems-based approach to improving quality of health services. Whether you work at the facility, sub-national or national level, or in specific communities, you will find resources within the Quality Toolkit to help you carry out essential tasks to improve quality of care. The overall structure of the WHO Quality Toolkit is outlined below:
Whether you are looking at quality of health services through a health system perspective, as a health care worker, as an advocate, or as an expert in the field of quality of care, the Toolkit will guide you through important functions for supporting quality of care and provide links to relevant tools to help you complete specific tasks and activities. The various types of tools are also grouped according to the different levels of the health system so you can find and access them according to your needs. The Toolkit also provides entry points for sharing information through several virtual (or online) communities that you can also participate in.
The Toolkit is designed to support stakeholders using the WHO Quality health services: a planning guide, to plan and implement interventions to improve the quality of health services. This makes it relevant to key health stakeholders from the national, sub-national and local levels, including communities. More specifically, users include authorities (at national, sub-national and local levels), regulators, managers, health care workers, as well as patients and communities. In addition, the Toolkit is helpful to those who are focused on advancing quality health service delivery across the continuum of planning, assurance/control and improvement, for example development partners, advocates and health training institutions.
The Toolkit includes key WHO tools related to the quality of health services. It focuses exclusively on materials published by WHO, so does not include third party publications and tools which may also be of value to you. The Toolkit will be updated periodically to reflect new and emerging WHO information relevant to improving quality of health services, for example quality-related tools and emerging resources from various WHO technical products currently under development. WHO works extensively on many specific technical areas which are not all reflected in this Quality Toolkit. For a comprehensive index of all WHO published material, visit https://apps.who.int/iris/ and for WHO technical guidelines, visit https://www.who.int/publications/who-guidelines.
The purpose of the Toolkit:
This Toolkit provides you with tools to facilitate specific actions to enhance the quality of health services in your country. In addition, it supports and hopefully enhances your understanding of the interlinkages across the health system that are key when implementing any tool. For example, conditions may be required at the national level for local level efforts to be successfully deployed, or community engagement may be essential for perspective and trust at any level within the health system.
The ultimate goal of the Quality Toolkit is to IMPROVE the quality of health services.
The Quality Toolkit and the Operational Framework for Primary Health Care
In 2020, WHO and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) launched the Operational framework for primary health care: transforming vision into action. The framework outlines the strategic and operational levers that require attention by countries as they plan and implement primary health care reforms within their health systems. Primary health care is a cornerstone of broader efforts to achieve universal health coverage and the Sustainable Development Goals. One of the levers highlighted by the framework focuses on Systems to improve the quality of care, underlining the need for a “multimodal suite of interventions tailored to the local context, while simultaneously working to improve the broader health systems’ environment and culture that support the delivery of quality care.” In fact, there are strong linkages to quality of care across all fourteen levers outlined by the framework. Stakeholders involved in primary health care reforms are a key audience for the Quality Toolkit, which responds to the need for practical tools that these stakeholders can employ to implement the PHC operational framework, and thus firmly embed quality of care within health systems strengthening.