Financing common goods for health
What are common goods for health?
Common goods for health (CGH) are core, population-based functions or interventions that are essential to the health and well-being of entire societies. In this way, they are cross-cutting functions and interventions that do not sit exclusively within a single disease- or intervention-specific area, or even within the health sector. They require public financing (supplemented by donor funding in some cases), regardless of whether they are delivered by public or private sector providers due to fundamental market failures.
They fulfil the following conditions:
- Contribute to human health and sustained economic progress over the long term;
- Provision or preservation is subject to market failures, typically because they are either public goods (meaning they are non-rival and non-exclusionary), or they have large social externalities.
CGH fall into five broad categories: 1) policy and coordination, 2) regulation and legislation, 3) taxes and subsidies, 4) information collection, analysis and communication, and 5) population services (see Examples below for more information on each)
Financing common goods for health
Global, regional and national common goods for health
Financing for CGH depends on the level at which the function sits. The benefits of many CGH do not adhere to local or national borders. Please click below for examples of CGH by level of financing.
| Level of financing | Examples of CGH functions |
| Global (Supranational) Level |
|
| Regional (Across Multiple Countries) Level |
|
| Country (National) Level |
|
| Sub-National Level |
|
Examples of common goods for health by category
Please click below for examples of common goods for health by category.
| CGH category definition | Select examples |
| 1. POLICY & COORDINATION: Formation of national policies, institutional capacities and coordination mechanisms |
|
2. REGULATION & LEGISLATION: Full range of legal instruments |
|
3. TAXES & SUBSIDIES: Financial instruments to influence individual and market behaviour | Taxes on products with health impact to create market signals leading to behavior change |
| 4. INFORMATION COLLECTION, ANALYSIS & COMMUNICATION: Collect and analyse information, and monitor population-level change |
|
5. POPULATION SERVICES: Services that impact all of society and are fundamental to public health |
|
Financing common goods for health
Challenges
Despite their importance and necessity for public financing, CGH suffer from both market and collective action failures, and as a result are often underfunded and underprovided relative to investments in personal, facility-based services.
These market failures contribute to and are compounded by a lack of action by governments to prioritize CGH in budgeting processes. Governments’ inaction on CGH stems in part because individuals and communities do not necessarily demand CGH because their benefits are invisible or are society-wide. There is then little political incentive for government action, which tends to respond to more easily perceived or urgent issues.
Financing modalities
The domestic financing agenda for CGH must be integrated into annual and multiyear budget dialogues as well as any health financing and national budget reform dialogues. Funding for cross-cutting functions (such as laboratories, trainings, surveillance or information systems) requires pooled resources and coordination across the health sector and other relevant sectors. Many CGH must be produced or managed across various levels and sectors of government, which raises issues related to internal government and multisectoral budgeting, coordination and accountability.
Some countries may make public financial management (PFM) adjustments to expand and re-prioritize budgetary space to allow funds to flow to CGH functions. For example, moving away from input-based line-item budgeting can enable the more flexible approaches needed to finance CGH, both within the health sector and across the entire public sector. The performance and accountability orientation of programme budgeting can allow multiple sectors to contribute to common objectives. However, this process needs to be carefully managed to ensure monitoring and accountability mechanisms are in place and in use.
Additionally, conditional transfers in decentralized settings can influence and support allocation decisions, given that most priority setting and budget allocation decisions are made at sub-national levels of government.
Publications
Financing common goods for health
Common Goods for Health (CGH) are the core population-based functions or interventions that are essential to the health and well-being of entire societies....
Health financing for the COVID-19 response
This Process Guide lays out a sequenced set of analytics and actions to support reorienting budgetary arrangements to facilitate the ability of national...
Health programmes are able to target health interventions for specific diseases or populations, and historically, countries have relied heavily on them...
Activities
Related health topics
Related Links
Contact Us