Monitoring Universal Health Coverage Within the Sustainable Development Goals
2018
This article from The Lancet Global Health describes an index of essential health service coverage that enables countries to measure progress in adopting universal health coverage (UHC) through the guarantee of quality essential services coverage and financial protection for all. UHC plays a central role in the health-related Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which were adopted by the international community in 2015 to address global challenges through economic, social, and environmental progress. UHC is seen as both a goal unto itself, and a means to ensure progress toward meeting other health-related SDG targets. This paper focuses on the measurement of SDG indicator 3.8.1, which addresses the coverage of essential health services—such as reproductive, maternal, newborn, and child health; infectious diseases; non-communicable diseases; and service capacity and access—among the general and the most disadvantaged populations. The index includes 16 tracer indicators drawn from each of the four essential services categories; indicator data from 183 countries were taken from United Nations agency estimates or databases and supplemented with national data to establish baseline numbers of coverage, and the index can be further refined to incorporate additional relevant indicators as SDG monitoring continues. A companion paper addresses SDG 3.8.2, which relates to the proportion of households with large health expenditures as a share of total household consumption or income.
Monitoring Universal Health Coverage Within the Sustainable Development Goals
Source:
Hogan DR et al. Monitoring Universal Health Coverage Within the Sustainable Development Goals: Development and Baseline Data for an Index of Essential Health Services. The Lancet Global Health 2018; 6(2): e152-168. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S2214-109X(17)30472-2.