The World Bank has published a new policy report on the topic of fair processing of universal health care coverage. Alex Voorhoeve, Head of Department at LSE Philosophy, is one of the authors.

The new policy report is titled ‘Open and Inclusive: Fair Processes for Financing Universal Health Coverage’ and has been published by the World Bank, in collaboration with the Norwegian Institute of Public Health and the Bergen Center for Ethics and Priority Setting in Health.

Link to the report (open access).

About the report

The report offers decision support on fair processes for policy choices relating to health financing for universal health coverage (UHC). It opens by making the case for why fair processes matter for health financing. It argues that procedural fairness contributes to fairer outcomes, strengthens the legitimacy of decision processes, builds trust in authorities, and promotes the sustainability of reforms on the path to UHC. The report then describes key health financing decisions with an impact on equity in service coverage and financial protection, where issues of procedural fairness are particularly important. Next, it offers principles and criteria for designing and assessing the processes around these health financing decisions and provides suggestions for how to make them fairer. Finally, the report examines country experiences with diverse instruments that can be used to operationalize principles and criteria for fair processes in health financing decision-making.

Authors

This report was prepared by a team from the Health, Nutrition and Population (HNP) Global Prac- tice of the World Bank (WB), the Norwegian Institute of Public Health (NIPH), and the Bergen Centre for Ethics and Priority Setting (BCEPS) at the University of Bergen in Norway, under the overall guidance of the HNP Global Director Juan Pablo Uribe. The core report team comprised Christoph Kurowski and David B. Evans (WB); Unni Gopinathan, Elina Dale and Trygve Ottersen (NIPH); Ole F. Norheim and Alex Voorhoeve (BCEPS). The extended team included Steve French, Espen Movik and Elizabeth Peacocke (NIPH).