Decision rules for allocation of finances to health systems strengthening

Alec Morton, Ranjeeta Thomas and Peter C. Smith

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: A key dilemma in global health is how to allocate funds between disease-specific “vertical projects” on the one hand and “horizontal programmes” which aim to strengthen the entire health system on the other. While economic evaluation provides a way of approaching the prioritisation of vertical projects, it provides less guidance on how to prioritise between horizontal and vertical spending. We approach this problem by formulating a mathematical program which captures the complementary benefits of funding both vertical projects and horizontal programmes. We show that our solution to this math program has an appealing intuitive structure. We illustrate our model by computationally solving two specialised versions of this problem, with illustrations based on the problem of allocating funding for infectious diseases in sub-Saharan Africa. We conclude by reflecting on how such a model may be developed in the future and used to guide empirical data collection and theory development.

Keywords: cost effectiveness analysis; economic analysis; global health; health systems strengthening; resource allocation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C60 C61 C63 I10 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 12 pages
Date: 2016-09-01
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (12)

Published in Journal of Health Economics, 1, September, 2016, 49, pp. 97 - 108. ISSN: 0167-6296

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:101206

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