North-East Regional Health Authority – Jamaica

NORTH-EAST REGIONAL HEALTH AUTHORITY FABIA M. LAMM REGIONAL DIRECTOR on the island goes through 14 parishes and all decisions were being made at the Ministry of Health in Kingston and the understanding and agreement was that health service needs to be done and felt at the community level. And so, to better serve the people within the parishes, within the communities, it was the belief that it would be better monitored and delivered through the regional health authorities which are now focused within communities within parishes.” The decentralization of the management of the Health Service is designed to facilitate the provision of cost-effective, accessible, integrat- ed healthcare of an acceptable standard to the Jamaican public. NERHA is under the control and direction of a Board of Directors comprised of 15 persons appointed by the Minister of Health. NERHA covers the parishes of St. Ann, St. Mary and Portland, a geographic area of 1,018 square miles, and a population of almost 400,000. This is about 14 percent of the general population, which makes it the smallest of the four health regions in Jamaica. “Across these four regions, health service de- livery is given to the people of Jamaica,” Lamm goes on to explain. “So the Ministry of Health in Kingston is now responsible for policy direc- tion, monitoring, and evaluation, and, basically, overseeing to ensure that the delivery of health services is adequately done by the four regional health authorities. Here at NEHRA, we work at delivering health services through a network of 70 health centers, four general hospitals, one being a regional hospital, and two community hospitals.” Fabia Lamm comes to this work from an ex- tensive background in management. The struc- ture of the Regional Health Authority is that its CEO, or Regional Director, is not required to be PORT ANTONIO HOSPITAL