Research Articles
Author	Publication date	Title [Format, Language]	Description	Publisher
Barraza-Llorens, M.; Bertozzi, S., Gonzalez-Pier, E.; Gutierrez, J. P.	2002	Addressing inequity in health and health care in Mexico [PDF, English]	Despite the fact that life expectancy at birth in Mexico has improved from forty-two years in 1940 to seventy-three in 2000, major inequalities persist in health and access to health care. The Mexican health care system has evolved into a series of disjointed subsystems that are incapable of delivering universal health insurance. Without greatly restructuring the way health care is financed, performance with respect to equity will remain poor. This paper presents the inequities of the system and describes how the current system contributes to the status quo rather than redressing the situation. After tracing the origins of the present system, we discuss policy initiatives for moving toward universal health insurance.	Health Affairs
Deaton, A.	2001	Counting the World's Poor: Problems and Possible Solutions [PDF, English]	The apparent lack of poverty reduction in the face of historically high rates of economic growth-both in the world as a whole and in specific countries-provides fuel for the argument that economic growth does little to reduce poverty. At the international level, the regular revision of purchasing power parity exchange rates plays havoc with the poverty estimates, changing them in ways that have little or nothing to do with the actual experience of the poor. At the domestic level, the problems in measuring poverty are important not only for the world count but also for tracking poverty within individual countries. Yet in many countries there are large and growing discrepancies between the survey data-the source of poverty counts-and the national accounts-the source of measure of economic growth. Thus economic growth, as measured, has at best a weak relationship with poverty, as measured.	The World Bank Research Observer
Medici, A. C.	2005	Public and Private Health Financing in Latin American and The Caribbean During the Nineties: A Brief Analysis [PDF, Portuguese]	The purpose of this paper is to analyze the public and private financing to the health sector in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) during the nineties. It begins by explaining how public and private financing works in the health sector, describing some of the particularities of both sectors and the synergies between them. Next, it analyses how both sectors had been financed in Latin America, discussing some characteristics and trends, and evaluates the scarce evidence available about the contribution of both sectors to better performance and equity in health. The last part of the paper summarizes its findings and presents the main conclusions.	Sustainable Development Department, IDB
Medici, A. C.	2003	Family Spending on Health in Brazil: Some Indirect Evidence of the Regressive Nature of Public Spending in Health [ PDF, English]	The analysis presented in this report compares the structure of family spending on health in Brazil between 1987 and 1996, while indirectly identifying the impact of universal access to health care on family spending.	Sustainable Development Department, IDB
Medici, A. C.	2002	Financing Health Policies in Brazil [ 81 kB, PDF, English]	This article assesses the decentralization process of the Brazilian health sector, evaluating the principal measures used by the government to address financing and equity issues in the composition and distribution of the expenditures. Based on this analysis, it describes some of the problems that still persist in relation to the public financing of health services in Brazil, pointing out some of the possible solutions.	Sustainable Development Department, IDB
Musgrove, P.; Zeramdini, R.	2001	A Summary Description of Health Financing in WHO Member States [PDF, English]	This paper is meant to provide a descriptive analysis of what WHO Member States are currently spending on health and how it is financed. The objective is to see what patterns, if any, emerge from simple comparisons and to comment on what such patterns imply for the adequacy of spending and the distribution of the financial burden among sources of finance and among households.	Commission on Macroeconomics of Health Working Paper Series
Reinhardt, Uwe E.; Hussey, Peter S.; Anderson, Gerard F.	2002	Cross-national comparisons of health systems using OECD data, 1999 [PDF, English]	This paper presents selected components of the 1999 OECD Health Data. Previous trends in spending for health care, supply and use of health care resources, and health status are updated for the thirty industrialized countries in the OECD. In 1999 the United States spent 53 percent more on health care than any other OECD country spent. The paper reviews two possible reasons for the difference: economic development and population aging. It discusses spending, supply, and utilization for specific categories of health care services: pharmaceuticals, physicians, hospitals, and high-technology services. The paper concludes with a consideration of the strengths and weaknesses of using OECD data to compare health systems.	Health Affairs
Schieber, G.; Maeda, A.	1999	Health care financing and delivery in developing countries [PDF, English]	Developing countries account for 84% of world population and 93% of the worldwide burden of disease; however, they account for only 18% of global income and 11% of global health spending. Limited resources and administrative capacity coupled with strong underlying needs for services pose serious challenges to governments in the developing world. This paper analyzes health spending, health outcomes, and health delivery system characteristics for the six developing regions of the world as well as for low-, medium-, and high-income country groupings.	Health Affairs

Research Organizations
Alliance for Health Policy and Systems Research (AHPSR)	AHPSR is an initiative of the Global Forum for Health Research, with the collaboration of the World Health Organization. It aims to promote the use of knowledge for enhancing health system performance, and provides a space for sharing of the best practices on how to achieve health goals, plan, manage and finance activities to improve health.
European Health Policy Research Network (EHPRN)	The EHPRN, founded by the late Professor Brian Abel-Smith, comprises a distinguished list of academics from centres of excellence throughout Europe. It builds on the work of established centres of excellence and aims to develop a continuous liaison between researchers and policy makers at the heart of Europe. To this end, scholars and researchers from the Network's institutions meet periodically to participate in workshops, conferences, and training and research activities.
José Luis Bobadilla Health Policies Prize	The José Luis Bobadilla Health Policies Prize has been created to stimulate research in health policy and into the health system reform processes in Latin America and the Caribbean.
International Health Systems Program (IHSP) at the Harvard School of Public Health	Harvard’s IHSP has contributed to the development of methods for measuring and analyzing health expenditure, as well as to the application of those methods in more than 30 countries.
Nucleus of Collection, Analysis and Diffusion on Initiatives in Health System Reform (NAADIIR)	The website, available in Spanish and English, describes an initiative that aims to: - Promote comparative analysis of international healthcare reform efforts. - Obtain, classify and publicize documentation on healthcare policies and their reform. - Support discussion of subjects relating to health care reform in developing countries.
PAHO Research Coordination Program	The Research Coordination Program of the Division of Health and Human Development cooperates with the countries of the Region to develop knowledge that contributes to alleviate relevant public health problems of their populations. The Strategic and Programmatic Orientations approved by the Pan-American Sanitary Conference and the recommendations of the PAHO's Advisory Committee on Health Research (ACHR) are the main guidelines to orient the work of this Program.
World Bank Trust Fund for Statistical Capacity Building	The Trust Fund for Statistical Capacity Building (TFSCB) has been established by the Development Data Group of the World Bank to strengthen the capacity of statistical systems in developing countries. It provides a global facility, administered by the World Bank on behalf of donors, to make investments at the national, regional and global levels to improve the collection, processing, analysis, storage, dissemination and use of timely, good quality statistics to support poverty reduction and economic and social development.
World Bank Institute's Flagship On-Line Journal	This 'Online Journal' disseminates short articles on new and promising approaches to improving health, nutrition and population outcomes, as well as lessons learned about approaches that did not perform as expected. Many of the articles describe experiences with innovative health care financing strategies.