On December 12, 2015, the world celebrated the second annual Universal Health Coverage Day to commemorate the anniversary of the unanimous United Nations resolution calling for countries to provide affordable, quality health care to every person, everywhere. More than 100 countries and 500 partners participated in UHC Day this year, proving yet again that #healthforall is on everyone’s mind.
In the spirit of UHC Day, the Results for Development (R4D) and the DC Health Systems Board, in collaboration with the World Bank and the Joint Learning Network for Universal Health Coverage (JLN), held a robust discussion on key takeaways from the newly-released “Going Universal: How 24 developing countries are implementing UHC from the bottom up” series, including various perspectives on how policymakers can tackle common challenges such as: expanding coverage, expanding benefits, domestic resource mobilization, improving service delivery, and strengthening accountability.
The discussion, which took place on December 16 at the R4D headquarters in Washington D.C., featured an exciting lineup of speakers, including:
- David de Ferranti, president and CEO of R4D — Moderator
- Daniel Cotlear, lead economist and task manager of the Universal Health Coverage Studies Series (UNICO) at the World Bank — Presenter
- Karen Cavanaugh, director of USAID’s Office of Health Systems — Panelist
- Davidson Gwatkin, R4D senior fellow — Panelist
- Amanda Folsom, program director at R4D — Panelist
Daniel Cotlear, a lead economist at the World Bank, believes the publication brings further good news to supporters of UHC. The book shows how 24 developing countries are hard at work to achieve bottom-up UHC through programs that are new (<10 years old); large-scale (cover 1/3 of the world’s population); and transformational (change the way health systems work).
