Community Health Insurance Agents Training: Key to Sustaining Pro-Poor Health Care Access in Ghana

Health Insurance in Ghana is a brilliant and great attempt to create health access for all Ghanaians, particularly the poor and marginalized in society. Financial barriers have been removed by the introduction of the scheme. However, there is the question of targeting to include the core poor (indigents) who may not be able to pay premium. This is addressed in the Health Insurance Act, but criteria for identification of these core poor are modeled without recourse to social cultural dynamics that frowns on open declaration of core poor status. This book provides a clear guide on how community health insurance agents can still use the insurance laws to identify indigents and still keep community believes intact. Moreover, health insurance is a community to be sold. In areas were economic poverty is pronounced and endemic such as Northern Ghana, it will take technical expertise to be able to get the poor who may wish to exchange health insurance payments with basic needs such as food to enroll. This technical knowledge lays in the extent to which community mobilization tools can be used to showcase health insurance as a communal commodity and get all community members to use social capital mobilization skills to purchase it. This book extensively explains training of health insurance agents on basic participatory tools that can be used in achieving greater enrollment into the health insurance scheme in poor areas in Ghana.