| The health needs of populations are in
transition, and health systems and scientific knowledge are changing rapidly. In order to
meet these challenges, decision makers need the tools, capacity, and information to assess
health needs, choose intervention strategies, design policy options appropriate to their
own circumstances, monitor performance, and manage change. The overall challenge is to
ensure that policymakers have access to the best evidence and tools, and that they also
have the capacity to use them to enhance the performance of their health systems. The programme of work on the functions of
financing, provision, stewardship and resource generation is expanding. One step involves
developing and testing tools to analyse the organisation and operation of all four
functions, and effective coverage with key interventions. Another is to develop an
evidence base on experience with service integration and decentralisation strategies. In
addition, efforts are beginning to develop cheap, practical tools for routinely monitoring
trends in sub-national health systems performance, and also provider performance, in a way
that provides relevant information to policy makers and managers. There is a particular
focus on tools that are feasible for low-income countries. These tools are based on the
expressed needs of countries, and are being developed in collaboration with them. WHO also
proposes to develop a systematic but practical way of assessing national health
information systems.
A major effort is being made to promote more consistent and evidence based advice
on health policy and systems issues across the Organisation. A comprehensive analytic
review of health financing options in different settings is underway, that will culminate
in a WHO health financing policy. A substantial part will be oriented to
addressing major policy questions in low-spending countries. The
work already under way to analyse inequalities in outcomes between the poor and non-poor
(in health, responsiveness, financial contribution, and also coverage with effective
interventions) will be linked to work analysing functions, to improve the knowledge base
on effective pro-poor health policies - for financing and human resources in particular.
A major effort is required by WHO to more effectively communicate new information
to national decision makers and their advisors, and help them use it. This website is part
of that effort. More efforts are needed to develop the capacity of national authorities to
use this data for policy and planning, in parallel with support to build skills to improve
the data itself. There will be a publicly available database of national health
expenditures by country. A new database called CHOICE (CHoosing Interventions that are
Cost Effective) provides cost effectiveness analysis on a broad range of interventions
(preventive and promotive as well as curative). The analyses are done by WHO sub-region,
and can be adapted to the national level if so desired. |
