Our Approach

PCI works with partners to strengthen the primary healthcare workforce and the systems around them. We advise and support our partners across a range of building blocks of primary care to improve the quality of care and to strengthen clinical and community-based management of healthcare.

We have particular expertise in supporting integration of non-communicable disease (NCD) care in primary care. NCDs like heart disease, diabetes, cancer and mental illness represent a particular challenge to overstretched health systems. They now make up 7 of the world’s top 10 causes of death. Without a strong primary health care system, NCDs are often unrecognised until they cause significant disability or premature death, as well as making people more vulnerable to infectious disease.

Through our ‘Co-create, Coach, Catalyse’ model we work to build confidence and capacity, co-creating innovative, practical solutions to the endemic challenges facing healthcare systems in diverse settings globally.

  • Co-create: At PCI we recognise that a one-size-fits-all package won’t work. As practising primary care clinicians, we understand the needs of busy clinicians working with limited resources. We work alongside our partners to develop evidence-based, pragmatic, actionable guidance, learning resources and toolkits for primary care delivery, drawing on our global experience as well as international evidence. We ensue these are adapted and appropriate to the context and community and with an emphasis on person-centred care.
  • Coach: Bridging the gap between policy and action, PCI offers evidence-based, peer-led training and mentoring via our PCI Academy. Through face-to-face, online or a blended model, we strengthen primary care capacity by delivering practical health workforce solutions: focusing on building confidence and motivation as much as skills and competence. We have developed carefully structured cascade training programmes which enable our initial training to be cascaded and embedded much more widely. Trainers then become a resource for workforce development into the future. PCI also places emphasis on developing leadership through tailored mentoring and distance support programmes.
  • Catalyse: Realising change is not simply a question of advancing the clinical knowledge of health workers. By also looking at the whole ‘system’ – whether at clinic, district or national level – PCI offers adaptable practical tools and advisory services encompassing clinic management, procurement, referral pathways, monitoring, evaluation and quality assurance. By sharing approaches for managing change, we enable communities to test and evolve solutions that ensure sustainable, affordable access to primary healthcare. We provide technical expertise to partners testing new and innovative models, which recognises the importance of context as well as efficacy of proven clinical interventions, and in turn generates evidence of what works – promoting scalable models of care.

With a firm belief in compassionate, person-centred healthcare, PCI occupies a unique position, bringing deep clinical and systems expertise to integrated primary healthcare.

Innovative solutions to ensure strong primary health workforce and systems are urgently needed, particularly in low and middle income countries, to respond to new and existing demands.

Our key goals focus on:

  • Health workforce capacity strengthening
  • Testing innovative models of primary care
  • Nurturing leadership

We see the use of digital leaning as an enabler, with potential to reach more people and realise a greater impact.

Read more in our strategic plan and Theory of Change.

Project examples