It is really good course.

Very good.

I am grateful to the course organizers for putting it out there.

As a general introduction, the course needs a better explanation of how its different parts come together. For instance, Part 1 sessions on organisations and change does not link up with the last few sessions which introduce Health Systems. The presentation of the sessions on organisations and change is overloaded with detailed personal experiences of the lecturer, there are no references to where the models come from, and the models themselves don’t seem thought through.

Week 2 is much better than Week 1. I think the view of the PHC is obsolete, same as the WHO’s view of it. Nowhere in the world does PHC fulfill all the roles expected of it, including education and social mobilization, or “fixing the local markets” example. With the amount of money allocated to PHC in M/LICs it’s not realistic to expect all that. I did like the HS building blocks explained on the example of the malaria program, I found malaria more relatable than the example in Week 1. The “last mile” session is informative and the one on private vendors is interesting, although a bit repetitive, and there’s a mismatch between the voice-over and the slides in a number of videos. What I really liked in Week 2 is the matrix of the Global Fund CSS blocks and the community systems.

Week 3 seems an improvement in setting the stage and good overview at the start of the lecture covering the main elements. I do not understand why, while the course is on health systems, the practical assignment is not on health systems, but on organizational change.

Week 4 material on policy making makes an important highlight of the responsibility of policy administrators, and I liked the comparison between the different policy formation models. The lecturer is spot on about the detrimental impact of WTO/patents. The lecturer’s accounts of advocacy implementation are a clear value-add.

Generally I think it would be best to have a separate course on organizational change and on health systems/community systems. I do not think the health systems and the organizational change parts of this course blended well together.

Some detailed observations are: the course could benefit from mentioning sources/providing reference links. Also it would be great if there was a possibility to fast-forward/rewind by 10 seconds, like on Netflix 😊 I personally find many of the illustrations/pictures used to be a bit dated, and more diversity in the images would be welcome. The image on slide 10 of Week 2 struck me, it’s about nutrition, on the image there are two smiling men who are at a table with food in front of them, and there is a seemingly sidelined woman holding a child who sits at the edge. It would be good to mention something about the role of gender or intra-family food security! I think sometimes the lecturer goes in too much details on the clinical aspects of different tropical diseases. I do appreciate the time, effort and resources that were put to produce this course, with a few changes the course can improve.

The videos were fairly long and extremely detailed albeit it required complete and undivided attention. If you don't do very well when it comes to watching long lectures, it's better to start now because it's going to be worth it. Thanks!

The information is very useful but, some slides of the videos are not synchronize with the audio and make difficult to understand the classes.

The information provided was very useful, but the method (videos/lectures) were too monotonous.

The content organization is very random and one component does not flow into the other.

The approach to teaching is very boring- the instructor is simply reading out information without engagement.

The good part about the course is the case study approach to teaching which makes it easier to apply in a practical setting.

Very structured and interesting course