Health Financing

Introduction

Universal health coverage (UHC) is where all people have access to the health services they need, when and where they need them, and without financial hardship. Although strides towards UHC have been made, many challenges remain owing to recent global events.

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted at the global level the social and economic importance of health and UHC. The collaborative research programme builds directly on the work of the University of York’s NIHR Global Health Econometrics and Economics Group (GHE2), which focused upon Brazil, Indonesia and South Africa. For the Unit, India is included as an additional research location. These four ‘middle-income’ countries comprise nearly two billion people and 45% of the world’s population living in absolute poverty.

HFACT will use the tools and perspectives of health financing and economics to carry out in-depth, policy-relevant analyses on specific health finance, related topics, engage with communities and stakeholders, and conduct capacity building.

The Unit’s research will comprise the analysis of existing data, modelling, primary data collection and policy evaluation, shared across four policy themes and four cross-cutting methodological areas.