The quality of care provided by health systems contributes towards efforts to reach sustainable development goal 3 on health and wellbeing. There is growing evidence that the impact of health interventions is undermined by poor quality of care in lower-income countries. Quality of care will also...

Considerable progress has been made towards the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) since 1990. Although advances in improving MDG 4 and MDG 5a (reducing child and maternal mortality, respectively) have been made, progress is some countries have been insufficient. While some...

Samoa currently faces two important public policy challenges in the health sector. One is to stem, and then reverse, the rapid rise of non-communicable diseases (NCDs). The second challenge is to put the country on a health-financing path that is effective, efficient, and financially affordable...

Countries vary widely with respect to the share of government spending on health, a metric that can serve as a proxy for the extent to which health is prioritized by governments. World Health Organization (WHO) data estimate that, in 2011, health's share of aggregate government expenditure in...

The objective of this review was to study where community-based family planning and nutrition programs have been integrated, how this has been accomplished, and what the results have been. Although family planning is a nontraditional intervention in community-based nutrition programs, it can...

The aim of Health in All Policies (HiAP) is to bring diverse sectors together to find shared solutions; it focuses on identifying 'win-win' or 'cobenefits' such that policy measures contribute not only to improved health outcomes but also to outcomes desired by other sectors, such as education,...

This note analyzes levels and trends of health expenditures by country, income group, and region in the context of overall government revenue, expenditure, and GDP trends between 1995 and 2010. The study uses available data from the World Health Organization's (WHO) National Health Accounts, the...

Laboratories have historically been under supported in developing country health systems resulting in poor quality diagnosis and inadequate disease surveillance. Laboratory professionals are predominantly male with relatively limited female labor participation, with potential gender based...

Information and communication technologies (ICT) for health or eHealth solutions hold great potential for generating systemic efficiencies by strengthening five critical pillars of a health system: human resources for health, supply chain management, health care financing, governance and service...

Malawi has made great progress in improving maternal and child health (MCH). Under-five mortality declined from 244 to 71 deaths per 1,000 live births between 1990 and 2012, and maternal mortality declined from 1,100 to 510 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births between 1990 and 2013. This note...