The Role of Health in Education and Human Capital: Why an Integrated Approach to School Health Could Make a Difference in the Futures of Schoolchildren in Low-Income Countries.

Healthy students learn better, yet most current investments in schoolchildren focus on education and learning while largely neglecting the health of the learner. Some school-based interventions, such as school feeding and deworming, are already successfully targeted at this age-group, but the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of such programs could be greatly enhanced by better integrated delivery alongside other priority health interventions. A symposium at the society's 68th annual meeting launched a process to explore how integrated delivery of school-based interventions can address prevalent health conditions in school-age children

Getting it right when budgets are tight: Using optimal expansion pathways to prioritize responses to concentrated and mixed HIV epidemics

Published: October 3, 2017Background: Prioritizing investments across health interventions is complicated by the nonlinear relationship between intervention coverage and epidemiological outcomes. It can be difficult for countries to know which interventions to prioritize for greatest epidemiological impact, particularly when budgets are uncertain. Methods: We examined four case studies of HIV epidemics in diverse settings, each with different characteristics. These case studies were based on public data available for Belarus, Peru, Togo, and Myanmar. The Optima HIV model and software package was used to estimate the optimal distribution of resources across interventions associated with a range of budget envelopes. We constructed “investment staircases”, a useful tool for understanding investment priorities. These were used to estimate the best attainable cost-effectiveness of the response at each investment level. Findings: We find that when budgets are very limited, the optimal HIV response consists of a smaller number of ‘core’ interventions. As budgets increase, those core interventions should first be scaled up, and then new interventions introduced. We estimate that the cost-effectiveness of HIV programming decreases as investment levels increase, but that the overall cost-effectiveness remains below GDP per capita. Significance: It is important for HIV programming to respond effectively to the overall level of funding availability. The analytic tools presented here can help to guide program planners understand the most cost-effective HIV responses and plan for an uncertain future.Robyn M. Stuart, Cliff C. Kerr, Hassan Haghparast-Bidgoli, Janne Estill, Laura Grobicki, Zofia Baranczuk, Lorena Prieto, Vilma Montañez, Iyanoosh Reporter, Richard T. Gray, Jolene Skordis-Worrall, Olivia Keiser, Nejma Cheikh, Krittayawan Boonto, Sutayut Osornprasop, Fernando Lavadenz, Clemens J. Benedikt, Rowan Martin-Hughes, S. Azfar Hussain, Sherrie L. Kelly, David J. Kedziora, David P. Wilso

Servicios de salud en América Latina y Asia

Esta publicación es la primera de una serie que compara experiencias exitosas en gerencia social de América Latina y el Caribe con Asia. Esta serie surge de la iniciativa del Instituto Interamericano para el Desarrollo Social (INDES) y el Programa Japón, ambos adscritos al Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo (BID). La publicación reúne valiosas experiencias relacionadas con la provisión de servicios de salud en América Latina y Asia que fueron presentadas en el seminario sobre estudios comparativos en el sector de la salud, realizado en Tokio y Sapporo, Japón, entre el 29 de agosto y el 1º de septiembre de 2000. El seminario fue organizado por el INDES y el Programa Japón, con la colaboración de la Representación del BID en Japón y con el apoyo financiero del gobierno del Japón. El seminario reunió a 15 distinguidos investigadores y encargados de la formulación de políticas de salud de las dos regiones, así como a representantes de la Organización Mundial de la Salud, el BID y del Banco Asiático de Desarrollo.

Key characteristics of the HIV epidemic and response in Myanmar, Belarus, Togo and Peru.

<p>Acronyms used: PWID: people who inject drugs; FSW: female sex workers; MSM: men who have sex with men.</p

Key parameters used to inform the transitions for the epidemiological model.

<p>Key parameters used to inform the transitions for the epidemiological model.</p

Investment staircase for Peru.

<p>Illustrates the relationship between total (optimized) investments in the HIV response (right panel), and the overall outcome in terms of cumulative DALYs from 2017–2030 of that response (left panel; black bars indicate interquartile ranges).</p

Investment staircase for Belarus.

<p>Illustrates the relationship between total (optimized) investments in the HIV response (right panel), and the overall outcome in terms of cumulative DALYs from 2017–2030 of that response (left panel; black bars indicate interquartile ranges).</p

Investment staircase for Myanmar.

<p>Illustrates the relationship between total (optimized) investments in the HIV response (right panel), and the overall outcome in terms of cumulative DALYs from 2017–2030 of that response (left panel; black bars indicate interquartile ranges).</p

Investment staircase for Togo.

<p>Illustrates the relationship between total (optimized) investments in the HIV response (right panel), and the overall outcome in terms of cumulative DALYs from 2017–2030 of that response (left panel; black bars indicate interquartile ranges).</p