Financing Global Health 2014: Shifts in Funding as the MDG Era Closes

Financing Global Health 2014 is the sixth edition of this annually produced report on global health financing. As in previous years, this report captures trends in development assistance for health (DAH) and government health expenditure (GHE). Health financing is one of IHME’s core research areas, and the aim of the series is to provide much-needed information to global health stakeholders. Updated GHE and DAH estimates allow decision-makers to pinpoint funding gaps and investment opportunities vital to improving population health. This year, IHME made a number of improvements to the data collection and methods implemented to produce Financing Global Health estimates. Both government health expenditure and development assistance for health estimates were updated and enhanced in 2013.

Key Terms

• Development assistance for health: To develop DAH estimates, IHME collects data from organizations that provided funding for health projects in developing countries from 1990 through 2014. These data include annual reports, publicly available budgets, tax returns, and other information obtained through correspondence. Conversations with global health partners allow IHME to validate these data. Data are then processed into a form usable for analysis. In cases where 2013 and 2014 data are not available, IHME uses statistical methods that rely on previous trends in spending and budget data to produce preliminary estimates.
• Government health expenditure: IHME uses data produced by the World Health Organization (WHO) to provide estimates of GHE as a source of funding. Using DAH estimates, IHME employs the WHO’s GHE data to approximate how much governments spend on health-related activities out of their own treasuries as well as how these expenditures vary over time.