The Prosperity Fund’s Better Health Programme in Mexico aims to improve health care in the country by promoting a more inclusive and evidence-based response to the growing challenge of prevention, treatment and management of non-communicable diseases, such as diabetes and heart disease.
It is part of the UK Cross-Government Prosperity Fund that aims to reduce poverty by supporting inclusive economic growth and help towards achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals. The programme in Mexico is one of the largest of the Prosperity Fund’s Better Health programmes and will run for three years, supported by the UK’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO), Department of Heath and Department for International Trade.
Building Mexico-UK research collaborations
The programme is led by the organisation DAI and has three main strands around primary care, public health and training and education. IDS has been working to support the programmes’ strategy to build and facilitate Mexico – UK research collaborations, mutual learning and lasting partnerships on health, designed to last beyond the three-year life of the programme.
So far IDS has provided bespoke facilitation support to DAI to develop a theory of change and identify impact pathways. IDS and DAI are exploring how partnerships between UK and Mexican health institutions can generate and evaluate evidence of suitable approaches and models and use this evidence to inform and influence national and state level policy conversations.
Fostering mutual learning
This new work in Mexico builds on IDS’ body of work on health and mutual learning, such as the learning exchange project on food and nutrition policy between Brazil and the UK and the UK-China knowledge exchange on health and social care needs.
Researchers will explore the existing partnerships which exist, potential new ones, areas of research, and areas of demand for supportive collaboration. One of the main issues the DAI-led programme will be seeking to address is the area of obesity and diabetes, which is one of the main cases of death in Mexico and tackling it through trying to strengthen health systems, primary care and prevention.
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