Improving Value for Money Using Priority-Setting Institutions

If you have $200 to spend on health, how do you decide whether to vaccinate another ten children against deadly childhood diseases or provide treatment to one pregnant woman to prevent HIV transmission to her child? How can countries, donors, advocates, industry and civil society grapple with the difficult ethical, financial and health trade-offs implied? To help respond to these questions, CGD hosted the first meeting of a working group on Priority-Setting Institutions for Global Health, bringing together policy makers and experts to examine potential health gains and fiscal savings from increased allocative efficiency in public and donor spending on health, discuss existing priority-setting institutions and processes, and recommend strategies for more effective global support. The working group reconvenes in October following a British Medical Journal-NICE conference on the same topic, and will produce a report later this year.

Creating Regional Regulatory Pathways for Neglected Diseases

Tremendous progress has been made in the development of treatments for neglected diseases like malaria, tuberculosis, and Dengue fever—uncommon in the developed world, but prevalent and often lethal in developing countries. But, as Tom Bollyky states in a CGD Wonkcast, the challenge now is advancing these medical products—drugs, vaccines, and diagnostics—through the bottlenecked late-stages of the clinical trial process and into the hands of medical practitioners who can distribute them to the people in need. CGD’s working group, led by Tom Bollyky, recommends that developing countries team up to form regional regulatory pathways to pool research and regulatory expertise, reduce regulatory inconsistencies and overlap, and provide a more attractive platform for external donor support. During a time when the Institute of Medicine has called for strengthened regulatory systems in developing countries and the U.S. FDA has begun an initiative to streamline registration processes, the working group’s recommendations offer a practical and scalable way forward. The report will be published in October.

Using the Health Systems Funding Platform to Leverage Health Results

Launched at the G8 meetings in Muskoka, the Health Systems Funding Platform has advanced in several countries and is expected to benefit from GAVI and the Global Fund's health systems strengthening windows in 2012. In a new working paper, Amanda Glassman and William Savedoff assess the Platform and argue that it differs little from existing aid effectiveness modalities, such as sector-wide approaches and budget support. However, the Platform represents a unique opportunity to test whether global health aid could be more effective if it were linked explicitly to a few, independently verified health or coverage results and subject to rigorous and independent measurement and evaluation. The paper looks at strengths and limitations of results-based approaches, examines the implications of results-tied aid for aid volatility and suggests strategies for monitoring and evaluation.