Handbook of Healthcare Analytics

7 Global Health

Karthik V. Natarajan¹ and Jayashankar M. Swaminathan²

¹University of Minnesota

²University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

7.1 Introduction

Over the last twenty‐five years, there has been an increased push and commitment from developed nations towards addressing some of the pressing health issues prevalent in developing countries. During this period, the total funding contribution from developed nations, bilateral agencies, and NGOs toward improving health conditions in developing countries witnessed a roughly 500 percent increase (from $6.8 billion in 1990 to $35.8 billion in 2014; Dieleman et al. 2014). The increase in funding, combined with concerted efforts and targeted interventions at the national, regional, and local levels have led to signifcant improvements in health conditions across the globe and saved millions of lives. However, the improvements have been uneven across countries, and in some cases, the disparities in care across regions, gender, and economic conditions have increased over this period. The uneven improvements and the increased disparities in some cases have led to a renewed focus on the three key pillars of resource allocation—efficiency, effectiveness, and equity (see Swaminathan, 2003; Savas 1978). Efficiency is defined as the ratio of inputs to outputs or outcomes. Effectiveness refers to how well the need for services are met; in other words, do service recipients receive what they requested? Finally, equity is tied to ...