Ideas to Action:
Independent research for global prosperity
Health sector investments present an opportunity for the US International Development Finance Corporation (DFC), under the Biden-Harris administration, to demonstrate meaningful global leadership and refocus on its development mandate, driving broader health benefits and contributing to global economic recovery.
Implement quick wins to re-establish US credibility and engagement in global health
Around the world, procurement processes—which are vital to ensuring an affordable, reliable, and high-quality supply of health products—remain fraught with obstacles.
To achieve the SDG 2030 milestone—“universal access” to voluntary, high-quality family planning (FP) services—international FP funders and advocates seek to increase and sustain FP financing in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs).
As the pandemic accelerates, governments must also protect other essential health services. Already, there have been numerous reports of disrupted access to services ranging from labor and delivery and immunization to HIV and tuberculosis care to dialysis and cancer treatment—most notably in countries with strict lockdowns. Initial estimates paint a grim picture of the potential magnitude of negative impacts on health outcomes due to these disruptions.
As countries grow economically, governments face rapidly growing demands for quality, affordable, accessible, and equitable healthcare and other social services. At the same time, many middle-income countries face the prospect of transitioning away from donor aid, adding pressure to already-constrained public budgets to fill gaps as donor support ramps down.
There have been impressive gains in global health over the past 20 years, with millions of lives saved through expanded access to essential medicines and other health products. But behind these successes is an unacceptable reality: in many low- and middle-income countries, lifesaving health products are either unavailable or beyond the reach of the people who need them most.
In this note, we diagnose key challenges that will strain Gavi’s model during the 2021–2025 period and beyond. We then offer recommendations for an evolving approach, which closely align with Gavi’s goal to maximize the impact of countries’ current and future domestic investments.
Gavi’s mission—saving children’s lives and protecting people’s health by increasing equitable use of vaccines—remains highly relevant. Gavi 5.0 needs a new model to deliver on its laudable mission. This overview note lays out five challenges and summarizes some of our ideas to address them; backing up each is a standalone note that provides greater detail and options for action.
In many low- and middle-income countries, lifesaving health products are either unavailable or beyond the reach of the people who need them most.
Drawing on a range of political, economic, and social trends, this paper envisions how the global landscape might change between now and 2030, with a focus on the implications for global health, particularly the procurement of health products.
Next week, Women Deliver—the world’s largest conference on gender equality and the health, rights, and wellbeing of women and girls—will kick off. This note highlights three issues for the global FP movement post-2020. We review the underlying critical assumptions in FP2020’s initial design along with their strengths and weaknesses, and place future approaches squarely within the context of today’s evolving landscape—one that looks very different than the year 2012, when FP2020 was launched.
In October, world leaders renewed their commitment to Primary Health Care. Now is an opportune time to identify lessons learned and key challenges from the past 40 years, and to acknowledge the work that remains to be done to make vision reality.
The international family planning community has made impressive gains in increasing global access to high-quality, voluntary family planning services. However, significant challenges remain with maintaining current support and meeting the growing need projected for family planning services and commodities across low- and middle-income countries (LMICs).
Today, politicians are under growing pressure to squeeze more out of every dollar and guarantee greater access to better, more affordable healthcare for their citizens. In such a resource-constrained environment, wasting trillions of dollars on health every year is not viable. This note provides an overview of some of the approaches and policy options that the National Health Service in England has been using to maximise value for money.
This post previews preliminary answers to one initial question: what can we say about the size and nature of health commodity markets in low- and middle-income countries? We share early insights; list the data sources we used, while also signalling others we hope to draw on going forward; and highlight our assumptions and caveats.
With aid budgets shrinking and even low-income countries increasingly faced with cofinancing requirements, this is the right time for global health funders such as the Global Fund and their donors to formally introduce Health Technology Assessment (HTA), both at the central operations level and at the national or regional level in recipient countries. In this CGD Note, we explain why introducing HTA is a good idea. Specifically, we outline six benefits that the application of HTA could bring to the Global Fund, the countries it supports, and the broader global health community.
Evaluations are key to learning and accountability yet their usefulness depends on the quality of their evidence and analysis. This brief summarizes the key findings of a CGD Working Paper that assessed the quality of aid agency evaluations in global health. By looking at a representative sample of evaluations—both impact and performance evaluations—from major health funders, the study authors developed 10 recommendations to improve the quality of such evaluations and, consequently, increase their usefulness.
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