First Summer School success

The 1st Summer School for Global Health Economics and Priority Setting was held in Edinburgh on Sept 23-27, 2019.

The Summer School was organised by Professor Igor Rudan, co-lead for RESPIRE Platform II (Training and Capacity Development), alongside colleagues at the World Bank and UNICEF, with a number of RESPIRE members attending.

Priority-setting tools

Through their influence in our partner low- and middle-income countries, it was proposed to develop pathways from academic institutions to national Ministries of Health that would have a capacity to map, identify and utilise available data and set priorities in an equitable way.

To this end, the Summer School proposed to transfer knowledge on priority-setting tools developed at the University of Edinburgh: EQUIST, PATHS and CHNRI.

This should benefit both academic institutions and national governments, but also academic users internationally in a broad range of fields - from clinical researchers in academic institutions to researchers in epidemiology and public health, medical statistics, medical informatics, policy research, social science, ethics and health and development economics.

EQUIST is now being used in at least 14 African countries to direct large-scale investments in maternal, child and newborn health.

Development and use of the tools

Summer School students learnt about the development of EQUIST, as well as PATHS and CHNRI in a presentation from Professor Igor Rudan.

Dr Shahrouh Sharif, Community Systems Foundation, UNICEF, provided an overview of the development of the data science platform for EQUIST and its many utilities, as well as giving a demonstration on how it is used.

Implementation experience

In addition to hearing about the development and uses of the tools, attendees heard first hand experiences of their implementation in a number of countries, including Burkina Faso, Cote d'Ivoire, Chad, Ethiopia, Ghana and Nigeria.

Many thanks to presenters:

• Professor Igor Rudan, University of Edinburgh
• Dr Shahrouh Sharif, Community Systems Foundation, UNICEF
• Dr Robert Lucien Jean-Claude Kargougou, GFF officer, Burkina Faso
• Dr Marie Laurette Agbre-Yace, Institute of Public Health, Cote d'Ivoire
• Dr Jasmit Shah, Aga Khan University, Kenya
• Dr Shahrouh Sharif, Community Systems Foundation, UNICEF
• Prof C. Jesse Uneke, Director, African Institute for Health Policy & Health Systems, Nigeria