By Leah Ewald, Amanda Folsom, Maria Jose Pastor
The Financing Accelerator Network for NCDs (FAN) is built on a powerful idea: countries facing health financing challenges don’t have to navigate them alone. By learning together—sharing experiences, testing new ideas, and co-creating solutions—countries can make meaningful progress toward sustainable improvements in NCD financing. This is an increasingly urgent issue for low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), where the NCD burden is rising and resources allocated to health and NCDs are often limited.
What is Collaborative Learning?
Collaborative learning is an impactful strategy that brings together diverse stakeholders from different countries, sectors, and areas of expertise to share knowledge, solve problems, and learn from each other's successes and challenges[1]. These networks of learning create communities where members support each other over the space of several years, getting to know each other through in-person and virtual events, iterating solutions to common challenges, adjusting based on changing priorities, and building trust in each other as knowledge resources over time.
Collaborative learning is country-led. Member countries work together to determine priorities, co-develop strategies, and shape the community’s direction. The approach centers the expertise of country-level actors, capturing valuable tacit knowledge to advance systemic change. Most importantly, collaborative learning allows countries facing similar challenges to support one another rather than working in isolation. It creates space for experimentation, knowledge sharing, and scaling of solutions that have already shown promise elsewhere[2]. This peer-to-peer approach is essential for tackling complex global issues like NCD financing, where innovative ideas from one country can be adopted and adapted by others.
Collaborative Learning as a Driver of Systems Change
FAN integrates a regionally grounded, action-oriented collaborative learning model. Through a structured, iterative process, countries in the same region can come together to exchange experiences and practices that accelerate learning and spark innovation.
As FAN Country Members, stakeholders have the opportunity to take part in regional convening and learning initiatives and connect with a global network of experts and peers. Members will be supported by FAN’s regional NCD Financing Accelerator to apply gained insights to drive action on the ground, ensuring that learnings are embedded into policy and practice. Rather than remaining within the network, FAN’s collaborative learning model encourage lessons and insights to be amplified in-country, enriching the broader learning ecosystem.
A model built on experience
As the Network Manager of FAN, Results for Development (R4D) has facilitated several learning communities, offering concrete examples of where these networks have sparked significant policy changes. FAN draws on these experiences, including:
- Linked Immunisation Action Network: Linked has been instrumental in supporting Tunisia's introduction of the HPV vaccine this year. Tunisia joined this Gavi-funded network of 19 countries in 2023 during critical preparations for its school-based HPV rollout targeting 12-year-old girls. Participation in global workshops provided reassurance and practical insights into implementation strategies. Key refinements to Tunisia’s plan included integrating religious leaders into communication efforts to address hesitancy—a lesson drawn from Jordan and Uzbekistan’s experiences. Through Linked, Tunisia also gained access to global partners like Gavi, United Nations Children's Fund, and the World Health Organization, enhancing its understanding of technical support mechanisms and strengthening its funding application for vaccine procurement. Cross-regional engagements exposed Tunisia to diverse approaches, fostering innovation beyond regional norms and validating decisions like grade-based targeting over age-based cohorts. Tunisia’s case underscores the value of collaborative learning in refining health strategies, working with peer countries to tailor solutions to context, and bridging connections to global partners to help countries navigate political and logistical challenges.
- Joint Learning Network (JLN): In 2014, Nigeria launched the Basic Health Care Provision Fund (BHCPF) to enhance access to primary care for underserved communities. However, for several years, the initiative encountered challenges in implementation, primarily due to ineffective coordination among agencies and decreasing political momentum. Through the Joint Learning Network's Strategic Communications for Universal Health Coverage Collaborative, Nigeria recognized an opportunity for progress. By collaborating with counterparts from other countries, Nigerian health leaders developed tools such as the Strategic Communications Planning Tool. This tool helps countries align stakeholders, craft compelling messages, and translate reforms into action. In adapting this tool to Nigeria's unique context, the government made efforts to identify target audiences, clarify key messages, and improve coordination between national and subnational actors. These efforts culminated in a significant achievement: the Nigerian government made its first-ever appropriation to the BHCPF, marking a breakthrough that has opened the door for meaningful implementation.
- Strategic Purchasing Africa Resource Centre (SPARC):In Kenya, SPARC has played a pivotal role in advancing health financing reforms by bolstering initiatives to enhance strategic purchasing. Through SPARC's coaching model and collaborative learning platform, Kenyan policymakers received customized technical assistance and participated in peer exchanges with representatives from countries such as Ghana and India. These interactions culminated in creating a comprehensive purchasing diagnosis report, identifying critical bottlenecks within the existing system. Drawing on other countries' lessons, Kenya shifted NHIF's purchasing mechanisms to better align with service quality and equity goals.
These networks demonstrate that when countries and organizations come together to share knowledge and ideas, they can have a lasting, transformative impact on policy and practice. The insights and strategies gained through collaborative learning can move the needle on key health goals, including NCD financing.
Turning knowledge into impact
FAN is more than collaborative learning network—it goes one step further. In addition to fostering a community of knowledge-sharing, FAN also provides on-demand technical support and catalytic seed funding to advance NCD financing programs. This support helps countries test new ideas, trial innovative approaches to NCD financing, and scale solutions that are proving to be effective.
Access to on-demand technical support means that countries can get the expertise they need when they need it—whether it’s on designing a new financing model, navigating complex regulatory environments, or engaging stakeholders effectively. FAN also provides seed funding to help countries pilot these new ideas. This enables them to implement small-scale projects, gather evidence, and refine their strategies before scaling them up, reducing the risk of failure and improving the chances of success. FAN's on-demand technical support and catalytic seed funding can also support countries to not only draw insights from their own experiences but also to adapt and apply successful practices that have been implemented by peers. This collaborative learning environment fosters innovation and enhances the overall capacity of countries to address their unique challenges effectively.
Perhaps most importantly, this process is not contained within the network. As countries learn from their experiences, they bring that learning back to the network, contributing to a collective body of knowledge that can benefit all FAN members.
A New Era for NCD Financing
We believe that the financing challenges surrounding NCDs are solvable—but only if we work together, learn from each other, and support each other’s efforts. FAN represents an exciting opportunity to do just that through a collaborative model to drive change in NCD financing and contribute to improving health systems worldwide.
Countries interested in joining FAN’s Sub-Saharan Africa regional network as a country member and being part of a collaborative learning community can contact the FAN team at info@ncdfinancing.org.
Learn more about the role and benefits of being a FAN country member.
For more on collaborative learning, explore the R4D collaborative learning e-course.