Access to care

Our Aspiration

We aspire to enhance the reach and quality of care for people living with diabetes and related non-communicable diseases (NCDs) through supporting sustainable, resilient, and equitable health systems.

Our Focus

With this aspiration, we will concentrate on supporting health systems that are:

• Sustainable
• Resilient
• Equitable

These systems should deliver high-quality NCD services for populations throughout the life course. Strengthening access to care and supporting partners in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) to develop and deploy models of care that address diabetes and related NCDs is the main intervention area for WDF.

Our Approach

WDF’s support and guidance to partners take point of departure in:

• Experience and learnings from our extensive access-to-care project portfolio.
• WHO’s framework for health system strengthening, which provides a comprehensive approach to enhance resilience, effectiveness, and responsiveness of health systems.

The WHO framework includes six health system building blocks:

1. Governance
2. Health service delivery
3. Health workforce development
4. Health information systems
5. Access to essential medicines
6. Financing

This framework addresses systemic challenges and promotes equitable access to quality healthcare services. It also emphasises the interconnectedness and dynamics between these building blocks.

Health System Strengthening

By adopting this approach, we aim to support the development of a comprehensive and inclusive health system with a patient-centric focus. Our partners are not expected to deliver on all building blocks, but we encourage them to:

• Use this approach to identify systemic gaps.
• Assess opportunities to make a positive change.

Models of Care

WDF guides partners to use WHO’s recommendations as formulated in the WHO Package of Essential Noncommunicable (PEN) Disease Interventions for Primary Health Care, focusing on integration of services at the primary health care level to improve access and coverage—especially for people living in poverty and/or vulnerable situations.

Our Multi-Level Approach

Individual Level

We will support interventions aimed at improving health outcomes for patients through:

• Awareness raising
• Screenings
• Patient education

The purpose is to empower patients to self-manage their condition.

Organisational Level

At the health facility level, it is key to improve access, delivery, and quality of care by:

• Building capacity of healthcare professionals
• Strengthening clinics

We prioritise strengthening the public health system at primary and community health level, as this is often the first point of contact. Here, screening, prevention, diagnosis, and first-line care should take place to avoid overburdening higher, specialised levels.

Studies confirm that health systems with strong primary health care at their core have:

• Lower health costs
• Better population health
• Higher patient satisfaction
• Fewer unnecessary hospital admissions
• Greater socioeconomic equity

Systemic Level

Finally, we need to improve the policy environment and resource mobilisation to ensure efforts to strengthen NCD care are sustained.

Integrated, People-Centred Care

WDF promotes integrated care to:

• Enhance efficiency and optimise resource use.
• Respond to multiple conditions in a person-centred way, not disease by disease.

We aim to break down vertical, disease-specific silos at the primary care level and support partners in providing a comprehensive suite of health services, including:

• Health promotion
• Disease prevention
• Diagnosis
• Treatment (including prevention and treatment of diabetes complications)
• Disease management
• Rehabilitation

Our goal: Integrated, people-centred care, putting the individual—not diseases—at the centre, emphasising co-morbidities and responding to each person’s unique needs throughout the life course.

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