Globalization Health
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Globalization Health · Jan 2014
Regional variation in the allocation of development assistance for health.
The Global Burden of Disease (GBD) 2010 Study has published disability-adjusted life year (DALY) data at both regional and country levels from 1990 to 2010. Concurrently, the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) has published estimates of development assistance for health (DAH) at the country-disease level for this same period of time. ⋯ There are no evident explanations for so much variation in funding across regions, especially holding the purpose of the funding constant. This suggests donors' allocation processes have not been particularly sensitive to disease burdens. To maximize health gains, donors should explicitly incorporate new disease burden data along with the relative costs and efficacy of interventions into their allocation process.
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Globalization Health · Jan 2014
mHealth and global mental health: still waiting for the mH2 wedding?
Two phenomena have become increasingly visible over the past decade: the significant global burden of disease arising from mental illness and the rapid acceleration of mobile phone usage in poorer countries. Mental ill-health accounts for a significant proportion of global disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) and years lived with disability (YLDs), especially in poorer countries where a number of factors combine to exacerbate issues of undertreatment. Yet poorer countries have also witnessed significant investments in, and dramatic expansions of, mobile coverage and usage over the past decade. ⋯ Existing and developing mH(2) technologies represent an underutilised resource in global mental health. If development, evaluation, and implementation challenges are overcome, an integrated mH2 platform would make significant contributions to mental healthcare in multiple settings and contexts.
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Globalization Health · Jan 2014
Proposing a sequential comparative analysis for assessing multilateral health agency transformation and sustainable capacity: exploring the advantages of institutional theory.
This article proposes an approach to comparing and assessing the adaptive capacity of multilateral health agencies in meeting country and individual healthcare needs. Most studies comparing multilateral health agencies have failed to clearly propose a method for conducting agency comparisons. ⋯ To more affectively understand and explain why some multilateral health agencies are more capable of adapting to country and individual healthcare needs, SCA provides a methodological approach that may help to better understand why these agencies are so different and what we can learn from successful reform processes. As funding challenges continue to hamper these agencies' adaptive capacity, learning from each other will become increasingly important.