Month: November 2018

Through a number of collaborative projects with partners such as SEEK Development, UCSF’s Evidence to Policy Initiative, Open Consultants, and Spark Street Consulting, The Center for Policy Impact in Global Health has been studying the “global functions” of donor financing for health. By global functions, we mean collective action activities that address transnational health challenges. These activities can be categorized as (i) global public goods (GPGs), e.g., knowledge generation and sharing, or product development for neglected diseases; (ii) control of negative regional and global externalities, e.g., pandemic preparedness, and (iii) global health leadership and stewardship, e.g., global convening to build consensus. In one study led by our colleague Marco Schäferhoff, we found that there is substantial underinvestment in this critical area: only one-fifth of all donor financing for health targets…

In a new report written by the Lancet Commission on Investing in Health (the CIH), launched at last week’s Alma Ata at 40 meeting, the CIH draws on evidence from the third edition of the Disease Control Priorities (DCP3) to define essential universal health coverage (EUHC). DCP3 was a 7-year international collaboration that synthesized evidence on the most effective way to tackle priority health conditions in low-income countries (LICs) and middle-income countries (MICs). A key output of DCP3 was a set of 21 essential packages of interventions, each one aimed at a different health priority (e.g. reproductive health, pandemic preparedness).  As the CIH notes in the Alma Ata at 40 report: “Interventions were included in these 21 packages if they provided good value for money, were feasible to implement in…