Professor John Gyapong, the Pro-Vice Chancellor, Office for Research Innovation and Development, University of Ghana, has called for the engagement of policy analysts whose services would effectively impact on health issues and delivery.

He said the health sector needed a policy analyst who could analyse and propose effective alternative solutions for effective and efficient health systems in the country.

“We need a health system that is cohesive for efficient and effective health system for quality health care delivery,” he said.

Speaking at the closing of the 2016 New Year Health Policy and Systems seminar to build the leadership and management capacity of practising health sector professionals, Prof. Gyapong said it was critical to have such skills to influence and support health systems for transforming and strengthening outcomes in the sector.

He advised health professionals to have leadership skills that would equip them to impact positively for others to emulate.

The seminar, which was in four parts, was organised by the University of Ghana in collaboration with the Research and Development Division of Ghana Health Service.

The Rockefeller Foundation’s Transforming Health Systems Initiative and the Consortium for Health Policy and Systems Analysis in Africa Initiative supported it.

The 21 participants are middle and senior level leaders, managers and practitioners in the health sector at the hospital, district, regional or national levels.

Participants were taken through Strategic and Critically Reflective Leadership Practice; Leading and Managing in Complex Adaptive Systems; Policy Analysis and Implementation; and Health Policy and Systems Research.

Prof. Irene A. Agyepong of the School of Public Health, University of Ghana, said the seminars contributed to the development of the foundation for a Pan African Professional Doctoral programme in Public Health (DrPH), with emphasis on health sector leadership for transformation.

“It has also contributed to the development of learning competencies and conceptual framework have been developed by a process of proceeding research in Ghana, South Africa and Uganda to identify the needs in the health sectors of these Sub-Saharan African countries,” she explained.

The Pan African DrPH Conceptual model, which she said would be implemented, would include biannual face to face seminars with supported and facilitated distance and workplace -based learning in a more cohort model that would involve peer to peer learning.

She commended the Nurses and Midwives Council and the Medical and Dental Council for accrediting the seminars for Continuing Professional Development.

The participants were presented with certificates.