Monitoring financial resource flows for reproductive, maternal, newborn, and child health is a central part of the Countdown — determining the funding gap between resources currently available and the actual investments required to reach national and MDG targets, and holding governments and the international community to account for investing adequately in the health of women and children. Policy-makers need financial information to make informed decisions on how to best allocate resources among competing needs, set priorities, and ensure sustainable funding for programs. The information should also be used to hold governments and their development partners accountable and ensure that adequate and sustainable funding is provided for RMNCH. Countdown’s Health Financing Working Group works to track and analyze these financial flows.
On this page, Countdown presents data and analysis relating to financial flows for reproductive, maternal, newborn, and child health. CD colleagues at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine recently published a dataset containing 2.1 million records used to generate estimates of official development assistance (ODA) to reproductive, maternal, newborn and child health (RMNCH) based upon donor, recipient country and activity type between 2003–2013. Disbursement information on donor-reported ODA and private grants were obtained from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Creditor Reporting System in January 2015 and coded based on donor name, project title, short and long descriptions, and CRS code describing the disbursement purpose. A recently published article describing the development of the dataset is cited below. The dataset is here: http://datacompass.lshtm.ac.uk/320/. A Tableau visualization is here: https://public.tableau.com/profile/ardito#!/vizhome/WorldRMNCH/DisbursementsRMNCH
More of the Finance Working Group’s research is summarized in the annual Countdown Reports, and has been presented in more detail in the following published articles:
- Grollman C, Cavallaro FL, Duclos D, Bakare V, Martínez Álvarez M, Borghi J. Donor funding for family planning: levels and trends between 2003 and 2013. Health Policy Plan. 2018 May 1;33(4):574-582. doi: 10.1093/heapol/czy006.
- Borghi J, Munthali S, Million LB, Martinez-Alvarez M. Health financing at district level in Malawi: an analysis of the distribution of funds at two points in time. Health Policy Plan. 2018 Jan 1;33(1):59-69. doi: 10.1093/heapol/czx130.
- Martinez-Alvarez M, Acharya A, Arregoces L, Brearley L, Pitt C, Grollman C, Borghi J. Trends In The Alignment And Harmonization Of Reproductive, Maternal, Newborn, And Child Health Funding, 2008-13. Health Aff (Millwood). 2017 Nov;36(11):1876-1886. doi: 10.1377/hlthaff.2017.0364.
- Pitt C, Grollman C, Martínez-Álvarez M, Arregoces L, Lawn JE, Borghi J. Countdown to 2015: an analysis of donor funding for prenatal and neonatal health, 2003-2013. BMJ Global Health 4 April 2017. http://gh.bmj.com/content/2/2/e000205
- Grollman C, Arregoces L, Martinez-Alvarez M, Pitt C, Powell-Jackson T, Hsu J, Greco G, Borghi J.
Developing a dataset to track aid for reproductive, maternal, newborn and child health, 2003–2013. Scientific Data 4, Article number: 170038(2017). doi:10.1038/sdata.2017.38. http://www.nature.com/articles/sdata201738. - Hsu J, Pitt C, Berman P, Mills A, Reproductive health priorities: evidence from a resource tracking analysis of official development assistance in 2009 and 2010, Lancet, 18 May 2013. DOI: 10.1016/S0140-6736(13)60762-X.
PDF - Hsu J, Pitt C, Greco G, Berman P, Mills A, Countdown to 2015: changes in official development assistance to maternal, newborn, and child health in 2009–10, and assessment of progress since 2003. Lancet 2012, 21 September 2012. DOI: 10.1016/S0140-6736(12)61415-9). PDF
- Pitt C, Greco G, Powell-Jackson T, Mills A, Countdown to 2015: assessment of official development assistance to maternal, newborn, and child health, 2003—08. Lancet 2010. 376 (9751): 1485-1496. PDF
- Greco G, Powell-Jackson T, Borghi J, Mills A, Countdown to 2015: assessment of donor assistance to maternal, newborn and child health between 2003 and 2006. Lancet2008. 371 (9620): 1268-1275. PDF
- Powell-Jackson T, Borghi J, Mueller D, Patouillard E, Mills A, Countdown to 2015: tracking donor assistance to maternal, newborn, and child health. Lancet 2006. 368 (9541): 1077-1087. PDF
In addition, Countdown in September 2012 published a Briefing Note summarizing the most recent findings on international and domestic financial flows for maternal, newborn, and child health.
In Countdown sessions at the 2013 Women Deliver conference, members of the Finance Working Group presented recent research and analysis on financial flows for reproductive, maternal, newborn, and child health:
Justine Hsu, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine
Development aid to reproductive health 2009-2010
Ravi Rannan-Eliya, Institute for Health Policy, Sri Lanka and Asia-Pacific National Health Accounts Network
Tracking resource flows for RMNCH in Asia-Pacific countries
Geir Lie, WHO
Has health expenditure for women and children scaled up or scaled down in low and middle-income countries? — An analysis of reproductive health and child health subaccounts
Dan Kraushaar, Management Sciences for Health and Henrik Axelson, PMNCH
Performance-based financing (PBF) to accelerate progress towards MDGs 4 and 5: What have we learned?
Finance Working Group members also presented on the financial analysis component involved in conducting a Country Countdown:
Country Countdown: Health financing component
The financial data used in Countdown’s reports and profiles are publicly available, and can be downloaded here. For more information about Countdown’s datasets, please contact the Countdown Secretariat at countdown@jhu.edu.