Analysis and assessment of the performance of the Municipal Leadership and Governance Program (MLGP) partner municipalities in improving health outcomes

Abstract

The Zuellig Family Foundation through the Municipal Leadership and Governance Program (MLGP) aims to bridge the gap between the Filipinos and the promise of universal health care through the local health managers. They developed a local health scheme with focus on the World Health Organization’s six building blocks of health system so the country can achieve the Millennium Development Goals on health by 2015. However, there are still no available methods that can measure the success of health programs such as the MLGP. In order to address this issue, the researchers proposed to quantify and assess the health outcomes and the municipality performance. Heath outcomes are represented using secondary data provided by the MLGP municipalities on the performance indicators for MDGs for health. Municipality performance is quantified using a scoring system developed by the researchers based on the performance indicators assigned by the ZFF for each WHO building-block and significant improvement in municipality performance was found. The health data was analyzed by comparing the medians of yearly data using non- parametric/distribution-free sign tests. Among the health indicators with complete data for all 28 municipalities, significant difference in health outcomes was found in the data proportions of ratio of facility-based deliveries (FBD), ratio of births attended by births attended by skilled personnel (SBA), contraceptive prevalence rate (CPR), and proportion of fully immunized children (FIC). Maternal and infant mortality ratio, under-five mortality rates and malnutrition rate did not show any significant difference within the two-year intervention time span. Ratio of facility-based deliveries and ratio of births attended by skilled personnel showed significant positive correlations with health financing, health service delivery, and total performance indicators. There is also a significant positive correlation between CPR and leadership and governance, health financing, health human resource, access to medicine and technology, health service delivery and total performance indicators. However, it is interesting to note that the data on fully immunized children showed significant but negative correlations with leadership and governance performance indicators.