Working Groups
|
GHPRN working groups:
CGD convened the Drug Resistance Working Group to identify practical and feasible ways that the global donor community could prevent or reduce the emergence of drug resistance against AIDS, TB, malaria, and other illnesses in developing countries. In addition to shedding light on country similarities, the Working Group will develop a common solution framework that can be brought to bear based on the risk factors for resistance across treatments for major diseases and thus will draw on examples and lessons from experience with treatment for HIV/AIDs, malaria, TB, and microbial infections. The Evaluation Gap Working Group was convened to understand why good impact evaluation of development programs is in short supply. Focusing on health, education and social sectors, the Working Group identified what would be required to ensure that the business of development includes learning what works and what doesn't. The Working Group's recommendations to solve the problem of the evaluation gap are presented in a final report, When Will We Ever Learn? Improving Lives through Impact Evaluation. The Global Health Forecasting Working Group was convened to study the challenges surrounding demand forecasting for essential medical technologies. The group concluded that better forecasting requires wider sharing of the risks involved in producing drugs among those who influence market dynamics, and aligning incentives through three mutually reinforcing actions: 1) improving the capacity to develop credible forecasts by taking forecasting seriously; 2) mobilizing and sharing information about product demand in a coordinated way through the establishment of an infomediary; and 3) adopting a set of contractual arrangements. These recommendations are presented in the Working Group’s final report, A Risky Business: Saving Money and Improving Global Health through Better Demand Forecasts. The Global Health Indicators Working Group examined potential measures of a government's commitment to health with the goal of identifying and recommending a set of indicators for consideration by the U.S. Millennium Challenge Corporation and other donors as they assess country eligibility for investment. The group's findings are presented in detail in the new report, Measuring Commitment to Health. The Global Health Resource Tracking Working Group identified the lack of timely, accurate data about spending on health services and public health programs as serious constraints on good policymaking and effective use of limited resources in developing countries. More information about what resources are expected - from whom, and for what purpose - and better tracking of how those funds have been spent will allow policy leaders, advocates and analysts to more effectively raise additional resources and allocate them toward the populations and types of services that are vital to the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals. The Working Group’s final report, Following the Money: Toward Better Tracking of Global Health Resources, calls for: coherent and long-term support to improve government budgetary and financial systems in the developing world; standard approaches to documenting and analyzing health sector expenditures; and more timely, predictable and forward looking data on external assistance to the health sector. The What Works? Working Group sought to identify, analyze and document large implementation successes in global health. The Working Group closely examined major public health successes in developing countries – programs that used cost-effective interventions and had a large, positive impact on health conditions that could be attributed to the programs’ activities. The Working Group identified the factors contributing to the successes, and the commonalities across them. These included: adequate and long-term funding, the existence of political champions, technical consensus, innovative technologies and delivery approaches, good management and effective use of information. The working group’s findings are featured in the CGD publication Millions Saved: Proven Successes in Global Health. The Working Group on IMF-Supported Programs and Health Expenditures investigated how macroeconomic policies under IMF programs in low-income countries interacted with the management of health spending in a context of scaled-up aid. Utilizing case studies and cross-country comparisons, the working group explored the evidence on what actually happened under IMF programs on the key issues where the IMF role has been criticized. The group concluded with six recommendations for the IMF as well as lessons for other stakeholders. The Working Group on Performance-Based Incentives was convened to examine how the use and quality of essential health services by the poor can be improved through the use of performance-based incentives. Building upon a growing body of evidence, the Working Group will explore how these innovations are working, how they are affecting (or could affect) the broader health system, and if and how they can be used to change key health-related behaviors. |