Costing tools
Child Health Cost Estimation Tool
World Health Organization
The Child Health Cost Estimation Tool is part of a set of tools developed by WHO to help managers and planners to estimate the financial costs of providing priority public health interventions. The tool allows the user to determine the financial requirements associated with scenarios for scaling up health interventions provided to children aged under five, over a period of time (1-10 years). Inputs and activities included in the tool are based on a review of costing studies and consultations with child health experts.
The tool uses a standard WHO methodology for assessing costs, based on an ingredients approach (Quantity x Price) and bottom-up costing. The tool provides a simple user interface requiring only basic technical and computer skills.
Contacts
For access to the Child Health Cost Estimation Tool and manual, please contact WHO Child Health Department, Karin Stenberg or Tessa Tan-Torres (see contact information below):
WHO Child Health Department
Karin Stenberg
Tessa Tan-Torres
Summary of main features
| Purpose | A strategic tool for medium term planning at the national or sub national level, to provide forecasts of financial resource needs for implementing a child health or child survival strategy. The tool can be used for the following purposes: - Estimate the total and incremental cost for the child health program as a whole. - Estimate the total and incremental cost of commodities specific to child health interventions. - Estimate the total and incremental number of care seeking events; both out-patient and in-patient visits, including referrals and follow-up visits that will need to take place in order to scale up as planned. - Estimate the total costs per year for planned programmatic investments for child health - i.e. activities that are carried out at national, province, district or facility level to support intervention delivery for child health. This includes development of guidelines, mass media campaigns, in-service training of health workers, and so on. |
| Health MDGs addressed | 4 |
| Scope of interventions | Priority preventive and curative child health interventions, including those delivered to the newborn until the child is 5 years old. |
| Type of software | Excel |
| User manual available | Yes |
| Potential users | Program managers and planners for child health; technical consultants and international organizations. |
| Skills required | Basic computer skills and familiarity with Excel is required. Experience with strategic planning and familiarity with ingredients based costing is useful but not essential. A requirement is however being able to access and interpret information on local epidemiology, coverage data, and clinical guidelines, and to be able to think strategically about programmatic activities required to implement the program(s) and to scale up interventions as envisioned. |
| Type and length of training required | No formal training is necessary. Familiarity with the tool using examples and the user guide may take 1-3 days. |
| Costing strategy and methods | The tool uses a needs-based approach, driven by epidemiology and standard case management guidelines. Costs are calculated using bottom-up methodology, ingredients approach: Price * Quantity. Default data is available in the tool for some assumptions on epidemiology, inputs and activities. |
| Level of aggregation | National and sub-national level |
| Program/system costs included | The tool includes modules for estimating costs related to program activities such as advocacy, planning, training and monitoring. Health system costs are not included however since these would be broader than child health |
| Time-frame | Medium 3-5 years (can be used for 1-10 years) |
| Modeling of intervention impact or interactions on epidemiology or demography | Yes, for (1) interactions on demography: functions take into account the life saving impact of the scaled-up interventions, and for (2) interactions on epidemiology; there are interactions included for some interventions with strong evidence e.g. breastfeeding for diarrhea; HiB for pneumonia. There is no modeling of health impact to estimate health outcomes. |
| Output | (1) Total and incremental cost for commodities, referral costs and programmatic investments; (2) Total and incremental ("scale up") number of care seeking events; both out-patient and in-patient visits, including referrals and follow-up visits that will need to take place in order to scale up as planned. (3) cost for visits. |
| Automatic generation of reports | Yes, in tabular and graphic format (not Word reports) |
| Country applications | Tool was recently developed. Initial pilot testing in Uganda in year 2005. Implementation of selected model components in Cambodia in 2006 as part of costing the national Child Survival Strategy. Revisions in 2007. The tool was subsequently used in Mozambique in February 2008 for costing the national strategic plan for newborn and child health. Further application in Lao in 2009 and Eritrea in 2010 to inform the costing of the national child health plans. |