25Oct 2018 by cnh21@duke.edu

Let’s End the Fuzziness in Universal Health Coverage

Latest News from the Center, Policy Blog
This Op-Ed first appeared in Global Health Now. [caption id="" align="alignnone" width="850"] The line begins at dawn in Myameyamu, Zambia for a monthly clinic that provides the only essential medical services for miles. Image: © 2012 Malcolm Spence/On Call Africa, Courtesy of Photoshare.[/caption] The global health community is gathering this week in Astana, Kazakhstan, to mark the 40th anniversary of the 1978 Alma Ata conference on primary health care. This time around, primary health care is being framed through the lens of universal health coverage (UHC). While everyone agrees that UHC is the right aspiration, the term has come to mean all things to all people, a catch-all with multiple proposed interpretations. The problem with this fuzzy language is that, without specificity, UHC risks being an empty promise. What does UHC mean, exactly?…
Read More
18Oct 2018 by klk48@duke.edu

Tracking financial commitments to women’s, children’s, and adolescents’ health

Latest News from the Center, Policy Blog
One of our key research interests at The Center for Policy Impact in Global Health is studying how money flows through the global health “system.”  We are interested in questions such as where does global health financing come from, through which channels does it flow, where does it end up, and how is it used?  There is an enormous financing gap to achieve the ambitious health-related Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)—one study suggests that an additional $371 billion is needed annually across low- and middle-income countries—and the tracking of finance flows is critical in knowing whether the gap is being closed.  Just meeting the child and maternal health targets in SDG3 alone is estimated to require an additional $33 billion annually. In recent months, along with our colleagues at Open Consultants…
Read More
10Oct 2018 by klk48@duke.edu

10/18/18 EVENT: Stories from Africa Seminar Series

Latest News from the Center
Stories from Africa Seminar Series Our center received a grant from the Duke Africa Initiative to establish a cross-cutting seminar series jointly organized by four centers at Duke University: The Center for Policy Impact in Global Health (CPIGH), Duke Center for International Development (DCID), Duke-Margolis Center for Health Policy, and the Duke Global Health Innovations Center (GHIC). These seminars will focus on health and economic development issues in Africa. 2nd event: Financing Health in Sub-Saharan Africa What are the key challenges for financing health in Sub-Saharan Africa? Who are the major global health actors and how will donor resources be best used as African countries begin to finance more of their own health needs with domestic resources? How does China’s Belt and Road Initiative fit into the global health landscape in Africa? Gain key insights at the discussion…
Read More
07Oct 2018 by klk48@duke.edu

We need breakthrough technologies to reach the Sustainable Development Goal targets for health

Latest News from the Center, Policy Blog
This blog was originally published as part of the Future Development blog series of the Brookings Institution on October 5, 2018. The original version can be found here. Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 3—ensuring healthy lives and promoting wellbeing for all—is accompanied by a very ambitious set of targets. These include ending avertable child deaths and ending the epidemics of AIDS, tuberculosis (TB), malaria, and neglected tropical diseases by 2030. Are these achievable or can they be dismissed as just a “fairytale”? ARE THE TARGETS ACHIEVABLE? Researchers have tried to answer this question using two complementary approaches. The first is to look at recent trends in death rates and then extrapolate these trends forward to 2030. The second is to model what would happen if today’s health interventions—such as medicines, vaccines, insecticidal…
Read More