221.652.01
Financing Health Systems for Universal Health Coverage

Prerequisite:

Biostatistics 140.611/612 or 140.621/622 or 140.651/652 and strong experience using Stata and large datasets. 313.639, Microeconomics, or 313.641, Health Economics I are recommended but not required to take the course.

Description:

Teaches the financing of health care in low and middle-income countries with the goal of achieving universal health coverage. Built around four themes of financing health systems: revenue sources, pooling, purchasing and provision of healthcare. Using this framework students learn how to evaluate country health financing systems. Progressing through these themes students learn to use metrics related to health financing, use household surveys to estimate some of these metrics, and also have an in-depth understanding of health financing systems of select countries. At the en, students should have a good understanding of health financing for a career in global health.

Learning Objectives:

Upon successfully completing this course, students will be able to:

1. Evaluate the health financing system of countries
2. Explain key health financing functions: financing, pooling, purchasing and provision mechanisms
3. Use survey data to estimate health financing metrics like out-of-pocket payments and related impoverishment indicators such as: headcount ratio, poverty gap, and catastrophic health expenditures
4. Examine the link between economic development, financing of health care, and poverty

Methods of Assessment:

This course is evaluated as follows:

• 30% Assignments
• 30% Assignments
• 40% Final Exam

Instructor Consent:

No consent required