Question

select a health care organization in Jamaica and conduct an evaluation of its structure, technology and people. The problem issues that may exist in each of these aspects of the selected organization should be identified. The group must determine which problem issue needs to be treated as priority for resolution (giving justification for the decision) and recommend the OD intervention(s) that would be most effective for resolving the priority problem, giving justification for the recommended intervention.

Answer 1

One health care organization in Jamaica is the World Health Organization (WHO) Country Office. Another organization is the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) which has outlined its strategic health priorities for Jamaica in its Country Cooperation Strategy (2017-2022). These priorities include strengthening the resilience of health systems within the framework of universal health, advancing an inclusive healthy lifestyle approach to address the health needs of the population, promoting an integrated approach to address the social and economic determinants of health and health equity in support of sustainable development, and addressing environment determinants to build resilient communities.

The Ministry of Health and Wellness has also outlined its key priorities within their Vision 2030 for Health (2019-2030). The high impact goals outlined in the strategic plan include ensuring a safe and healthy start for newborns and infants, improving the health of the population with an emphasis on reducing mortality, morbidity, and disability related to NCDs and their risk factors, reducing mortality, morbidity, and disability due to communicable diseases, reducing mortality, morbidity, and disability due to poor quality of health care, eliminating priority communicable diseases, including AIDS, tuberculosis, mother-to-child transmission of HIV, and congenital syphilis, eliminating neglected infectious diseases as public health problems, reducing the number of cases of death, disability and illness with emphasis on protection of the poor and vulnerable populations affected by emergencies and disasters.

Based on this information, it seems that one priority problem that needs to be addressed is strengthening the resilience of health systems within the framework of universal health. An OD intervention that could be effective in resolving this problem could be implementing a new model of care that aims to strengthen development of Primary Health Care-based health systems. This would result in health services delivery that is more accessible, equitable, efficient, of higher technical quality, and better fulfills citizens’ expectations.