Common Goods for Health By WHO

Common Goods for Health (CGH) are population-based functions or interventions that require collective financing, either from the government or donors based on the following conditions:

Contribute to health and economic progress;

There is a clear economic rationale for interventions based on market failures, with focus on (i) Public Goods (Non-Rival, Non-Exclusionary) or (ii) large social externalities.

 

Not all public or common goods are CGH and vice versa, but all CGH must generate large societal health benefits that cannot be financed through market forces.

Policy and Coordination (ex. disease control policies and strategies)

Taxes and Subsides (ex. taxes on products with impact on health to create market signals leading to behavior change)

Regulations and Legislation (ex. environmental regulations and guidelines)

Information, analysis & communication (ex. surveillance systems)

Population Services (ex. medical and solid waste management)

More Information:

Current threats to the natural systems upon which all health and life depend threaten to undermine the health gains of the past decades.  These transitions require health systems to adapt in terms of prioritizing services, how they are delivered, and how health systems overall are financed.  Even the most basic functions of a health system, such as surveillance, have to adapt to recognize that non-communicable diseases and environmental risks are becoming more important for human health.

Common goods for health require collective financing from governments. This raises the question of how can governments prioritize investments and ensure the provision of common goods for health. Often times, inadequate national financing mechanisms, as well as international funding flows (e.g. budgeting processes, intergovernmental fiscal transfers, and organizational arrangements) work against this objective. WHO’s work on financing common goods for health helps to address how these financing mechanisms interact with and complement other aspects of health system financing, and how to improve alignment across the entire health system and beyond.