Person:
Secci, Federica
Author Name Variants
Fields of Specialization
Health management and policy,
Quality of care,
Performance measurement,
Behavior change
Degrees
ORCID
Departments
Global Practice on Health, Nutrition and Population, The World Bank
Externally Hosted Work
Contact Information
Last updated
January 31, 2023
Biography
Federica Secci is a Health Specialist in the Global Engagement unit of the HNP Global Practice. She joined the Bank as a Young Professional in 2013 and has supported operations and analytical work across different countries and regions, including Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Chile, India, and Vietnam. She currently works on the Primary Health Care Performance Initiative (PHCPI), a partnership launched in 2015 to improve measurement and use of data in PHC, and for which she co-leads the country engagement work stream. Prior to the Bank, Federica was a Research Fellow at Imperial College London, focusing mostly on quality of care and behavior change related to infection prevention and control in hospitals. Federica's doctoral research was a comparative, qualitative analysis of the PHC reforms in Estonia and Lithuania drawing from sociology and institutional theory. Federica also contributed to systematic reviews looking at integration of vertical programs into PHC.
Publication Search Results
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Publication
Primary Health Care in the World Bank’s COVID-19 Multiphase Programmatic Approach Portfolio Response: The Extent to Which Pandemic Response Activities Were Planned at the Primary Health Care Level within the World Bank’s COVID-19 MPA Projects
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2022-06)Soon after the World Health Organization (WHO) declared a pandemic, the World Bank made available rapid financing to strengthen countries' ability to respond to COVID-19 through a multiphase programmatic approach (MPA). The MPA's immediate objective is to prevent, detect, and respond to the COVID-19 pandemic. By July 2020, the World Bank’s board of directors had approved financing for 74 countries. This evaluation aims to determine the extent to which response activities were planned at the primary health care (PHC) level, and the extent to which PHC was leveraged within the first wave of MPA projects was determined by the number of PHC activities listed in the project components and indicators. Of 74 projects evaluated, 70 (94 percent) had at least one PHC-related activity listed in the components. Frequently planned activities at the PHC level primarily included surveillance, handwashing, and community engagement–related activities. MPA projects did not prioritize a commitment to maintaining essential service delivery at the PHC level. Several projects showed a greater commitment to integrating response activities at the PHC level, including Côte d’Ivoire, Egypt, Liberia, and Papua New Guinea, Senegal, the Republic of Congo. Notably, except for Egypt and Papua New Guinea, these projects were in countries that have been affected or threatened by the Ebola pandemic. These countries emphasized the integration of pandemic response activities at the community level. Overall, this evaluation highlights three takeaways: (1) the most common project activities related to PHC focused on surveillance, community engagement, and disease prevention; (2) among MPA projects, those in the sub-Saharan African region integrated more pandemic response activities at the PHC level than did other regions; and (3) maintaining essential primary health care services was not a priority among MPA projects in the initial phase of the response.