Every country faces the challenging task of keeping its people healthy. From delivering primary care in rural communities and urban centers to addressing health crises like pandemics, each country needs accurate and reliable data to plan and deliver quality health services.
Ministries of Health can benefit from leveraging geospatial data and technologies to better plan, monitor and implement timely health interventions; inform decision-making; and collaborate across sectors and regions to better serve communities. However, many countries currently miss out on these benefits because they lack a high-quality georeferenced health facility master list
Geolocated Health Facilities Data (GHFD) initiative seeks to turn this global gap into a global good. The initiative provides support for developing:
- a georeferenced Health Facility Master List (HFML) per country that is maintained, actively used, and publicly shared by the Ministry of Health;
- Ministry of Health capacity to leverage geospatial information systems (GIS) for health;
- a global directory containing HFML-related information of importance to the international community
Once developed, this framework will assist countries, regions, and the world in accelerating progress toward WHO's Triple Billion targets and the Sustainable Development Goals.
From a global gap to a global good
Further detail on the GHFD initiative strategic framework supporting implementation of the process can be found in resources
The COVID-19 pandemic underscored that many countries, even higher-income ones, do not know where all their health facilities are. Now is the time to invest in a solution – before the next health crisis.
The GHFD initiative is a collaborative effort that starts at the country level. Lasting impact depends on countries having the capacity they need to readily identify and track how many health facilities they have, what services they provide, and where they are located.
The GHFD initiative assists countries looking to establish, maintain, update, and share an HFML that everyone can refer to as the single source of truth.
Our mission is to strengthen the technical capacity of Ministries of Health across all levels to ensure the availability, quality, accessibility and use of HFMLs, increase data interoperability, and reduce duplicate work.
The initiative will also provide the world with the first central and accessible public directory of health facility-related information as global good for use by all. This global directory will contain the following for each UN Member State:
- Official definition of the health facility concept
- Classification table of health facility types
- Link to the HFML on MoH’s web site
- Specific data elements extracted from the HFML (unique identifier, official name, type and location) to which WHO will add a unique global identifier
The global directory will be regularly synchronized with the HFML of each country as they are updated
By 2027, we aim to have all 194 WHO Member States regularly updating their HFMLs and contributing information from them to the global directory.
The GHFD initiative is a key activity of WHO’s GIS Centre for Health.
Get involved
Joining the GHFD initiative will enable countries to establish, maintain, use and share their HFML with key stakeholders at every level to problem-solve, make sound decisions, and innovate. More than 50 partners are already involved in the GHFD initiative, including implementing partners, technical advisers and donors alongside WHO global, regional and country offices.
Governments
The GHFD initiative provides support to Ministries of Health in establishing, maintaining, regularly updating, sharing and using the HFML for their country.
Interested Ministries of Health can contact ghfd@who.int for more information and connect with their local WHO office using contact information posted on the respective country office page.
Donors
The initiative helps countries connect with donors and financial mechanisms to assist in HFML development and GIS capacity building. The initiative is also seeking support for the global directory, which will be a global public good.
Interested donors and other partners can contact ghfd@who.int for more information.
Data Users
The initiative assists countries in using and meeting best practices for data quality, governance, management and interoperability. Among other things this covers the concepts of data dictionary, metadata and unique identifiers
Interested academics and data organizations can contact ghfd@who.int with ideas. Note: The global directory is not available yet.
Delivering value at multiple levels
Strengthening health systems and delivery
Fragmented health facility data make evidence-based health planning difficult and underscore the need for better coordination.
Georeferenced HFMLs contribute to addressing these issues and enable better planning, monitoring and implementation of timely health interventions to better serve communities by....
Increasing data interoperability and coordination
Positioning the HMFL as a unique source of truth across the health sector enables data interoperability by.... This also reduces duplication and fosters collaboration and coordination within and beyond the health sector.
Leveraging data rather than simply collecting it
Data is only as powerful as it is used. The forthcoming metadata and data dictionary associated with the HFML ensures consistent understanding, usage and applicability of the HFML’s content. Accurate geographic coordinates enable users to visualize their location, analyse how accessible they are to the population, identify gaps, and spur innovation and new service development.
Empowering donors to invest and coordinate
A single accessible and verified HFML provides donors with an accurate picture of health facilities in a country. This saves time and resources by reducing duplication and providing quality data for planning and monitoring purposes.
Advancing progress toward global goals
Routinely updated HFMLs strengthen decision-making to increase health impact and drive creation of more efficient, effective and targeted programmes that advance global goals, including universal health coverage.