Health Equity: 01/17/08

Thursday, January 17, 2008

[EQ] Executive course on Global Health Diplomacy

Executive course on Global Health Diplomacy

June 23 - 27 200 - Geneva Switzerland

Graduate Institute of International Studies

Website: http://graduateinstitute.ch/executive/global-health-diplomacy_en.html

Application deadline 1st April 2008

“….Diplomacy is undergoing profound changes in the 21st century – and global health is one of the areas in which this is most manifest. The negotiation processes that shape and manage the global policy environment for health are increasingly not only conducted between public health experts representing health ministries of nation states but include many other major players at the national level and in the global arena. These include new philanthropies and private-public partnerships.

As health moves beyond its purely technical realm to become an ever more critical element in foreign policy, security policy and trade agreements new skills are needed to negotiate global regimes and international agreements and treaties and to maintain relations with a wide range of actors.

The summer course will focus on health diplomacy as it relates to health issues that cross national boundaries and are global in nature, will discuss the challenges it faces and how they have been addressed by different groups and at different levels of governance….”

Course Highlights

The programme of the course is highly participatory making use of the experiences participants bring from their work in the national and global arena; it includes lectures by internationally renowned experts and diplomats, workshops, case studies, visits to international organizations and practical exercises as well as “night caps” with officials from international organizations. The deliberations on Intellectual Property Rights, The Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, the International Health Regulations, the creation of new finance mechanisms such as the Global Fund for Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria or UNITAID, as well as the response to SARS and the Avian Flu are cases in point and will provide the real life backdrop to the discussions. The programme will also discuss approaches to policy coherence at the national level, such as “national global health strategies” and at the level of regional organisations.

Program includes:

- Identifying the key challenges and defining the goals of global health diplomacy; understanding the determinants of disease and health (globalization, security, demographic shifts, migration, technological development and communications)

- Understanding the changing interface between health and foreign policy, focusing on historical precedents in global health diplomacy

- Ensuring policy coherence at the national level through national global health strategies and cooperation

- Navigating the unstructured pluralism in global health governance (negotiating skills, strategic thinking and the responsibility to pursue global cooperation)

- Addressing the new global bioethics: genomics, trade policy, human rights, pharmaceutical, technological and human resources inequities

Course Director Ilona Kickbusch, PhD Visiting Professor HEI

Course co-directors
Thomas E. Novotny, MD MPH, Professor in Residence, Global Health Sciences
University of California, San Francisco, California

Nick Drager, Director, Department of Ethics, Trade, Human Rights and Health Law
World Health Organization

Gaudenz Silberschmidt, Director of the International Affairs Division,
Swiss Federal Office of Public Health,

Course Manager Badr Zerhdoud

Contact address:
Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies
Rue de Lausanne 132
P.O. Box 36
Ch 1211 Geneva 21

Email: globalhealthdiplomacy (at) graduateinstitute.ch
Tel: +41.22.908.57.04

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This message from the Pan American Health Organization, PAHO/WHO, is part of an effort to disseminate
information Related to: Equity; Health inequality; Socioeconomic inequality in health; Socioeconomic
health differentials; Gender; Violence; Poverty; Health Economics; Health Legislation; Ethnicity; Ethics;
Information Technology - Virtual libraries; Research & Science issues. [DD/ IKM Area]

“Materials provided in this electronic list are provided "as is". Unless expressly stated otherwise, the findings
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[EQ] Education and Health in G7 Countries: Achieving Better Outcomes with Less Spending

Education and Health in G7 Countries: Achieving Better Outcomes with Less Spending

Verhoeven Marijn ; Gunnarsson Victoria ; Carcillo Stéphane

International Monetary Fund - Working Paper No. 07/263: November 2007

Available online PDF [52p.] at: http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/wp/2007/wp07263.pdf

“…..A key policy challenge in G7 countries is to improve the performance of education and health systems while containing their cost. Education and health outcomes are critically important for social welfare and economic growth and thus, spending in these areas constitutes a large share of public spending. But there is concern about the efficiency of such spending. In education, there are questions about the ability of school systems to maximize the potential of students and respond effectively to changes in the demand for education outcomes. In health, there is concern about the rapid rise of the cost of health care and the impact on competitiveness, as well as trade-offs between the efficiency and equity of health systems.

This paper attempts to assess the efficiency of education and health spending in G7 countries. It asks whether countries could achieve better education and health outcomes at current levels of spending or, conversely, whether countries could have the same outcomes at lower levels of spending. We seek to establish a link between observed differences in efficiency across G7 countries and discuss the role of policy and institutional factors in explaining efficiency differences.

The paper also discusses efficiency-enhancing reforms for the education and health sectors. The analysis involves addressing complicated issues of what

drives outcomes in education and health and should be regarded as exploratory. Follow-up work on data and other parts of the analysis are needed for more definitive answers.

The paper is organized as follows. Section II provides the background and relevant literature for the analysis. Section III describes trends in education and health spending and outcomes in G7 countries. It also explores the issue of how efficiency in the education and health sectors in the G7 can be measured, and how observed differences between countries may be related to policy choices and institutions. Section IV makes some suggestions for reforms in the education and health sectors in G7 countries. The technical aspects of the analysis are elaborated in Appendix I. ….”

Contents

I. Introduction and Main Conclusions

II. Education and Health Spending, Outcomes, and Economic Growth: Background and Literature Review

III. Spending and Outcomes in Education and Health: Empirical Analysis

A. Trends in Education and Health Spending and Outcomes

B. The Relative Efficiency of Education and Health Spending

C. Achieving Better Outcomes with Lower Spending

IV. Concluding Remarks

Tables

1. Trends in Health and Education Spending, 1995–2003

2. Trends in Health and Education Outcomes

3. Efficiency of Education and Health Spending in G7 Countries Relative to the OECD

4. Spending and System Efficiency in Education and Health

Figures

1. Total Education Spending per Student by Level of Education, 2003

2. Total Health Spending per Capita by Source, 1998–2001

3. Efficiency and the Best-Practice Frontier

4. Secondary Education Spending and Average PISA Mathematics Scores

5. Secondary Education Spending and the Distribution of PISA Mathematics Scores

6. Secondary Education Spending and Upper Secondary Graduation

7. Tertiary Education Spending and Tertiary Graduation Rates

8. Public Health Spending and HALE

9. Public Health Spending and Standardized Death Rates

10. Public Health Spending and Infant Mortality

11. Public Health Spending and Child Mortality

12. Public Health Spending and Maternal Mortality

13. Teacher Salary in Secondary Education and GDP

Appendixes

I. Data, Data Envelopment Analysis, and Second-Stage Analysis

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[EQ] Course Social Inequalities in Health in Europe - Florence Italy - June 2008

Social Inequalities in Health in Europe Course

Florence, Italy, 16 - 20 June 2008
European Educational Programme in Epidemiology - EEPE

Johan Mackenbach and Anton Kunst, Erasmus University, Rotterdam, The Netherlands

Dateline to submit applications: May 7, 2008

Website: http://www.eepe.org/programsocial.html

This course deals with the measurement and explanation of socioeconomic inequalities in health, as well as with the design of
interventions and policies to reduce socioeconomic inequalities in health.

Examples of topics which will be covered are:

- concepts and methods for measuring health inequalities ;

- comparative analyses of health inequalities, both historical and geographical;

- current understanding of the factors and mechanisms which explain health inequalities ;

- analytical approaches to investigating determinants of health inequalities ;

- prerequisites for strategies to reduce health inequalities ;

- analytical approaches to evaluating the effectiveness of interventions and policies to reduce health inequalities ;

- examples of comprehensive strategies to tackle health inequalities.

For information , please contact EEPE secretariat in Lyon at :

E-mail : eepe@eepe.org Tel. No : +33 (0)4 78 78 56 54 / +33 (0)4 78 01 10 65 Tel. Fax : +33 (0)4 78 78 56 54

Residential Summer Course in Epidemiology
Florence, 23 June - 11 July 2008
http://www.eepe.org/programmain_course.html

Mail address: European Educational Programme in Epidemiology

c/o Agenzia Regionale di Sanità attention : Ms Caterina Baldocchi) viale Milton 7

50129 FIRENZE, Italy

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    IMPORTANT: This transmission is for use by the intended recipient and it may contain privileged, proprietary or confidential information. If you are not the intended recipient or a person responsible for delivering this transmission to the intended recipient, you may not disclose, copy or distribute this transmission or take any action in reliance on it. If you received this transmission in error, please notify us immediately by email to infosec@paho.org, and please dispose of and delete this transmission. Thank you.