For more information and to see the full list of members, go to: http://unsdsn.org/thematicgroups/tg5/tg5_members/

Extracts from the brochure:

The Economics of Tobacco Control Project at the University of Cape Town is soliciting expressions of interest from potential participants in an Emerging Tobacco Control Researcher Programme to be held in Cape Town, South Africa in 2013.

The programme is to be held in partnership with the International Tobacco Control Research Program at the American Cancer Society and funded through a grant by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation as part of the African Tobacco Control Consortium.

The programme is expected to take place in October 2013 and participants will spend a week in residence in Cape Town participating in workshops on tobacco control research.

This year the programme will focus on the economics of tobacco control, with a  particular interest in poverty and tobacco use, and will explore the use of existing survey instruments including expenditure surveys and demographic and health surveys.

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The call for abstracts is now open: https://afhea.confex.com/afhea/intl14/cfp.cgi

Remember to get your abstracts in by 31 August 2013.

The abstracts will be reviewed by the AfHEA conference Scientific Committee, which is co-chaired by HEU’s Prof. Di McIntyre.

“The last two decades have seen growing international recognition of the need to strengthen health systems in order to deliver already available cost-effective health interventions. This chapter describes the parallel global growth of the field of Health Policy and Systems Research (HPSR) and outlines what this field of research is and what it is not”. Page 151.

ORGILL, M., NXUMALO, N., AMDE, W., ERASMUS, E., LEHMANN, U., GOUDGE, J. & GILSON, L. (2013) Health policy and systems research: Needs, challenges and opportunities in South Africa – a university perspective. IN PADARATH, A. & ENGLISH, R. (Eds.) South African Health Review 2012/13. Health Systems Trust

The purpose of this paper is to compare the assessment of poverty/deprivation using different conceptions of this phenomenon including the traditional money-metric measure and different forms of multidimensional constructs.

ICHOKU, H. E., ATAGUBA, J. E. & FONTA, W. M. (2013) Economic behavior of medicine retailers and access to anti-malarials. International Journal of Social Economics, 40, 367 – 384.

The subsidization of artemisinin combination therapy (ACT) at supranational level to avoid undermining the private distribution system in sub-Saharan Africa and elsewhere, as advocated by Committee on the Economics of Antimalarial Drugs board on Global Health, requires the appraisal of the economic behaviour of relevant private agents in these regions, in order to assess their potential influence on access to ACT. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the economic behaviour of informal medicine retailers and how this effects access to ACT, using data generated from a primary survey in southeast Nigeria.

Written by WITS Centre for Health Policy’s communications officer, Greer van Zyl in the HPCSA Bulletin, includes interviews with Professor Di McIntyre.

http://www.hpcsa.co.za/downloads/press_releases/bulletin/2013/bulletin_magazine_2013.pdf

You can view the programme on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ay7H7cQVNkM

Professor Di McIntyre and Professor Crain Soudien (Deputy Vice-Chancellor) will be participating in post-2015 development goals discussions in New York at the Global Colloquium of University Presidents, which will also be attended by representatives of the United Nations during March 2013. They will be presenting on “what place should public health have in the post-2015 development framework? What should the main public health goals be?”

On 14th February 2013, Professor McIntyre outlined her presentation and sought input from the School of Public Health & Family Medicine in preparation for the discussions that will follow next month. Some of the main points she raised are highlighted below.

Of the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), three relate to health (child health, maternal health & HIV/AIDS); the post-2015 development goals are likely to only have one health goal, but could have a number of ‘roll-down’ targets or sub-goals.

Professor McIntyre put forward the need to recognise that the social determinants of health are key to improving health. One way of incorporating this public health goal would be to include health sub-goals in the roll-down targets of other post-2015 development goals. For example, a poverty-related goal could have a health-specific roll-down target of eradicating impoverishment due to catastrophic health care spending.

If the post-2015 development goals do only have one health goal, it is not likely that it will be a disease or demographic category goal as is the case with the current MDGs (e.g. to improve maternal health and reduce infant mortality). Rather, it is likely to be a broad health goal such as improving health life expectancy.

The ‘roll-down’ targets under a new health goal, however, should include all health challenges, such as non-communicable diseases, mental health, in addition to infectious diseases. Perhaps the broad health goal could also have roll-down targets connected with the goals of achieving universal health coverage, including access to needed health care services, especially at the primary care level.

What also needs to change is the way the current MDGs are only applied to low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). The new goals should also be applied to high-income countries.

When her presentation was complete, academics from the School of Public Health made other suggestions and comments. For example, more attention should be given to men’s health outcomes, the need for ‘shared responsibility’ in funding health care in low and middle-income countries, human resource issues in health care, community participation, etc.

Professor Di McIntyre participated in a Rockefeller Foundation Center discussion with other public health care experts in September 2012. The discussion has been documented in a report titled measurement of trends and equity in coverage of health interventions in the context of universal health coverage and is now available on http://www.worldwewant2015.org/health.

Chatham House opens up universal health coverage debate:

Professor Di McIntyre was invited to participate in a Chatham House event in London during October 2012 to discuss ‘moving towards universal coverage: Identifying sustainable methods for improving global health security and access to health care’. She was part of a working Group on ‘commitments to sustainable financing: A need for a new model?’ Chatham House is part of the Royal Institute of International Affairs (a “world-leading source of independent analysis, informed debate and influential ideas on how to build a prosperous and secure world for all”) chathamhouse.org. The results of the discussion have been published in a Chatham House report.