In developing countries, financial resources for health are highly constrained and often channeled in a short-term and unpredictable fashion. Families have relatively little protection against the financial and economic costs imposed by ill-health, and foreign aid programs in the sector, however well-intentioned, tend to be inadequately coordinated and aligned with local priorities. Extensive work has been done on these challenges, with many excellent contributions by thoughtful researchers and institutions around the world. Yet the uptake has not kept pace–many countries have yet to change ineffective approaches and adopt better policies based on evidence and encouraging experience elsewhere. Getting important, promising ideas out—and then debated and implemented—is an important and neglected undertaking.
To respond to this situation, the Health Financing Task Force (HFTF) was launched in 2006, following discussions initiated by the World Health Organization. As an independent entity, the HFTF promotes improved use of evidence, knowledge dissemination, and impartial policy dialogue and debate on new ideas in health financing that demonstrate great potential. Using prominent global voices to convey key messages, it aims to engage public and private sector interest and catalyze action to support pro-poor health financing policies.
Members of the Health Financing Task Force include His Royal Highness Prince El Hassan Bin Talal of Jordan; Mary Robinson, former President of Ireland; Julio Frenk, former Minister of Health of Mexico and currently Dean of the Harvard School of Public Health; Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, former Minister of Finance of Nigeria; Tim Evans, Assistant Director-General of the World Health Organization; Sir George Alleyne, Director Emeritus of the Pan American Health Organization and UN Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Caribbean Region; and Viroj Tangcharoensathien, Director of the International Health Policy Program at the Thai Ministry of Health. The Task Force is chaired by David de Ferranti, President of the Results for Development Institute (R4D), which also serves as its secretariat.
Since its inception, the HFTF has sponsored a wide range of analyses and debates, including:
- Briefings, panels, and high-level meetings with leaders from developing countries in China, India, Thailand, Spain, and Denmark, and consultations on health-related foreign aid in Germany, France, and the United States.
- Op-Eds and articles on health financing and development in the International Herald Tribune, the Times of India, the Frankfurter Rundschau, Health Affairs, and The Lancet, and papers on risk-pooling in low income countries and Rwanda’s efforts to scale-up community-based financing schemes.
In 2009, some HFTF highlights included: hosting a roundtable meeting to explore the impact of the current economic crisis on the African health sector with experts from the World Bank, World Health Organization, International Monetary Fund, and the U.S. Agency for International Development; providing expert input to the analysis of the two working groups for the Task Force on Innovative Financing for Health Systems; and drafting a report for the 25th Meeting of the UNAIDS Programme Coordinating Board on “The Impact of the Global Financial and Economic Crisis on the AIDS Response.” More recently, the secretariat launched the paper “Innovative Financing for Global Health A Moment for Expanded U.S. Engagement?” with the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ Commission on Smart Global Health Policy. The technical paper is an input to the Commission’s final report on Smart Global Health Policy and assesses the history of the U.S.’ involvement in innovative financing for health and opportunities to enhance its leadership in this area.
