What are National Health Accounts? National Health Accounts measure total health spending in a country in a given time period, providing answers to questions such as: How does the health system mobilize and manage its resources? Who pays for healthcare and how much do they pay? Who uses which goods and services? How is spending
Data about the health workforce There are serious shortages of health workers worldwide, particularly in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). International organizations have issued resolutions and frameworks positioning human resources for health (HRH) at the centre of the global health agenda and calling for efforts to strengthen the health
Why use data to drive policy? The policymaking function of government is powerful in creating conditions for population health. The data-driven approach levers government-generated data to produce insights, communicate information, and assess the health impact of policies and programmes. The approach generates information that describes the magnitude and extent of a health problem to inform potential
Why data for policy? Evidence has influenced policy shifts in global health, for example, introduction of: voluntary male medical circumcision programmes that prevent HIV transmission; laws enforcing wearing automobile seatbelts and motor bicycle helmets that have reduced deaths and brain injuries from traffic accidents; and legislation to control tobacco use that has dramatically reduced lung
Why assess interventions? Policymakers require evidence of the likely effectiveness of the interventions they consider supporting. Once they have implemented an intervention, they need data. The data will help them understand the coverage, effectiveness and impact of the intervention and inform development of future policy. Governments are accountable to themselves and the public for implementing
Why model global health estimates? Global health indicators are vital to track progress towards internationally agreed goals – eg the Sustainable Development Goals – and for donors to prioritize their investments. But in some countries, the data are sparse and of poor quality. A little less than half the deaths in the world, for example,
What are spatial and spatio-temporal modeling? People experience health outcomes, such as contracting a disease, at different points in time and in different locations. Epidemiologists who want to describe, explain and predict disease occurrence use spatial models to account for location, and spatio-temporal models to account for location and time, along with any known or
. Prevalence of diagnosed diabetes by county in the US. 2013. (Data Source CDC) What is a GIS? Despite the ubiquitous nature of location in our data and our lives, it is a variable that we still under-utilize in health and health policy decisions. How then, do we put geography to use in health policy
Why health economics? Economics uses and creates data that inform policy. Health economic analyses incorporate data from other public health disciplines, such as indices of disease prevalence and intervention efficacy. The analyses produce quantitative estimates of disease burden, costs, and cost-effectiveness which help policymakers prioritize diseases to target, and choose between intervention strategies to maximize
Role of epidemiology in developing health policy and programmes (Adapted from Tugwell et al.) What is epidemiology? Epidemiology is the study of how often diseases and other health-related events or states occur in populations, why they occur, and which and how interventions can effectively address health problems. Epidemiologists observe health conditions among groups of