Interesting Comment in The Lancet which is worth reading
Advancing the economics of health for all
Mariana Mazzucatoa iipp-director-pa@ucl.ac.uk ∙ Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesusb
Volume 404, Issue 10457P998-1000September 14, 2024
Full article can be found at
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(24)01873-7/fulltext?dgcid=raven_jbs_etoc_email Summary Highlights
"The incredible economic growth of the past century has delivered many benefits, including for health. But this growth has come at a heavy price in terms of pollution, climate change, unhealthy diets and behaviours, and the increasing burden of non-communicable diseases and antimicrobial resistance. Moreover, the benefits of economic growth have not been shared equally, with 4•5 billion people—more than half of the global population—still without access to essential health services and 2 billion individuals experiencing financial hardship when trying to do so, driving huge inequalities in health outcomes. Governments need to rethink the narrow focus on growth in gross domestic product (GDP) that typically dominates economic decision making.
The interlinked crises of health, climate change, and inequality are the direct result of economic policy choices. The primary goal of economic policy is assumed to be growth, with the danger that health, social, and environmental policies then have to respond to resultant problems. Under this framework, health and wellbeing are seen as inputs to or by-products of economic growth.2 Instead, the health of people and the planet should be the goal of economic policy and growth.
The WHO Council on the Economics of Health for All, chaired by one of us (MM) and composed of ten female economists and area experts, was founded by WHO to fundamentally rethink how the relationship between health and the economy is framed in economic policy and consider what it would mean for the economy to serve health. It flipped the assumptions around: instead of health serving the economy, what would it mean for the economy to serve health? The Council reimagined how economics and health relate across four inter-related areas and made recommendations in each: valuing health, financing health, directing innovation, and building public sector capacity. These recommendations have informed the new resolution on the Economics of Health for All that was endorsed by WHO member states at the 77th World Health Assembly (WHA) in May, 2024. The resolution gives WHO and its member states a mandate to pursue this new approach. But the success of the resolution will require fundamental policy changes.
Panel Recommendations of the WHO Council on the Economics of Health for All
Valuing
• Valuing the essential: treat health and wellbeing, health workers, and health systems as a long-term investment, not a short-term cost
• Human rights: use legal and financial commitments to enforce health as a human right
• Planetary health: restore and protect the environment by upholding international commitments to a regenerative economy that links planet and people
• Dashboard for a healthy economy: use a range of metrics that track progress across core societal values, above and beyond the narrow, static measure of gross domestic product
Financing
• Long-term finance: adopt a comprehensive, stable approach to funding health for all
• Quality of finance: redraw the international architecture of finance to fund health equitably and proactively, including an effective and inclusive crisis response
• Funding and governance of WHO: ensure WHO is properly funded and governed to play its key global coordinating role in health for all
Innovating
• Collective intelligence: build symbiotic public–private alliances to maximise public value, sharing both risk and rewards
• Common good: design knowledge governance, including intellectual property regimes, for the common good to ensure global equitable access to vital health innovations
• Outcomes orientation: align innovation and industrial strategies with bold cross-sectoral missions to deliver health for all
Strengthening public sector capacity
• Whole of government: recognise that health for all is not only for health ministries but for all government agencies
• State capacity: invest in the dynamic capabilities of the public sector, institutionalising experimentation and learning, to lead effectively in delivering health for all
• Build trust: demonstrate transparency and meaningful public engagement to hold governments accountable for the common good."
