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Key research themes
1. How can health systems effectively define, prioritize, and implement Essential Health Packages to achieve universal health coverage?
This theme explores the processes, criteria, and frameworks required for designing health benefits packages (also called essential or priority health packages) that are feasible, financially sustainable, and aligned with population health needs. It focuses on the importance of explicit prioritization, contextual adaptation, and linking packages to implementation strategies as key for advancing universal health coverage (UHC). Understanding how countries operationalize these steps matters for ensuring equitable access to quality healthcare within limited resources.
Key finding: This paper develops a comprehensive ten-element framework to establish a coherent and sustainable health benefits package aligned with UHC goals. It emphasizes explicit definition of benefits consistent with funds available... Read more
Key finding: This study identifies strategic design choices that enable essential packages of health services (EPHS) to be implemented effectively. It highlights the tension between criterion-driven prioritization and service delivery... Read more
Key finding: Through a participatory, evidence-based, and multi-criteria decision-making process involving 35 workshops with experts and public stakeholders, Ethiopia revised its essential health services package to prioritize 570... Read more
Key finding: This work developed a flexible essential health package tailored to diverse Indian states' epidemiological profiles and fiscal capacities. It elaborates on the package's contents spanning primary to tertiary care and... Read more
Key finding: This paper discusses the critical role of essential medicines within UHC benefit packages, emphasizing that reliable access to quality-assured medicines must be integrated with policy instruments such as national essential... Read more
2. What are the systemic barriers and facilitators impacting the availability and implementation of essential medicines and diagnostics in low- and middle-income countries?
This theme covers the practical challenges and enablers related to ensuring adequate supply, stock management, affordability, and access to essential medicines and diagnostics — critical components of essential health packages. Given that medicines and diagnostics drive significant costs and determine healthcare quality, understanding health system capacity constraints, incentive structures, and regulatory environments is vital to improving essential list effectiveness.
Key finding: This cross-sectional survey revealed an overall mean availability of 85% for essential medicines but exposed geographic and pharmacy-type disparities, with the lowest availability in the Northern Province. Many essential... Read more
Key finding: The commentary contrasts the Essential Medicines concept—which focuses on evidence-based, priority-need-driven selection of a limited list of effective and affordable medicines—with Health Technology Assessment (HTA), which... Read more
Key finding: Beyond selection, this paper highlights that medicines account for a large share of out-of-pocket health expenditure in LMICs, often leading to catastrophic costs. It identifies poor regulation, inefficiencies, substandard... Read more
3. How can integrated, context-sensitive clinical decision support tools improve the delivery of essential health services in resource-limited primary care settings?
Recognizing the complexity and variability of disease burden and resource constraints in low- and middle-income countries, this theme examines the development and evaluation of pragmatic clinical decision support interventions that simplify, standardize, and strengthen primary care delivery. Such tools bridge gaps between guideline complexity and frontline capacity, enabling effective implementation of essential health packages within overstretched health systems.
Key finding: The PACK guide, developed over 18 years and implemented across multiple LMICs, provides integrated, symptom-based clinical decision support tailored to primary healthcare realities. Evaluations including four pragmatic RCTs... Read more