Intervention in English.
The aim of this talk is to present the consequences for households of lack of financial protection for health-related expenses, and to discuss the policy responses that have developed to address this problem. The talk will discuss evidence on how much households pay and what types of care they pay for, and its consequences for the household economy and for poverty. The talk will then discuss the relative merits of various financial protection policies including removal of user fees, community based insurance, social health insurance, and general tax funding. Mention will be made of how donor policies can impact on country level decision making, and of the divergences in policies across the international agencies on financial protection approaches.
Professor Anne Mills is known globally for her contributions to health economics and health systems research. Following a long career as researcher and teacher at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, she took up the position of Head of the Faculty of Public Health and Policy between 2006 and 2011, and recently became the School's Vice Director for Academic Affairs. She is Professor of Health Economics and Policy and holds degrees from the Universities of Oxford, Leeds and London. Her research expertise is built on nearly 40 years' experience of the health systems of low and middle income countries, which started with a position as health economist in the Ministry of Health in Malawi between 1973 and 1975. Since joining the LSHTM in 1979, she has researched and published widely in the fields of health economics and health systems. Between 1990 and 2005 she directed the LSHTM's Health Economics and Financing Programme, which together with its many research partners, undertook an extensive programme of research focused on increasing knowledge of how best to improve health systems in low and middle income countries. Her main research contributions lie in the areas of health financing, including strategies for achieving universal coverage; the organisation of health systems including evaluation of contractual relationships between public and private sectors and related questions of the role of the private sector; economic analysis of disease control activities, especially with respect to cost-effectiveness analysis of malaria control interventions and scaling up of malaria control efforts; and economic analysis of maternal and child health programmes including tracking donor funding to such programmes in high burden countries. Professor Mills has had extensive involvement in supporting capacity development in health economics in low and middle income countries, for example through supporting the health economics research funding activities of the WHO Tropical Disease Research Programme, and Chairing the Board of the Alliance for Health Policy and Systems Research between 1999 and 2009. She has taught generations of LSHTM masters' students, and more than 25 research degree students have completed their degrees under her supervision. Professor Mills has advised multilateral, bilateral and government agencies on numerous occasions; acted as specialist advisor to the House of Commons Select Committee on Science and Technology's enquiry into the use of science in UK international development policy; was a member of WHO's Commission on Macro-economics and Health and co-chair of its working group 'Improving the health outcomes of the poor'; co-chaired one of the two Working Groups for the 2009 High Level Taskforce on Innovative Finance for Health Systems co-chaired by Gordon Brown and Robert Zoellick; and most recently chaired one of the two working groups for WHO's Commission on Accountability and Information for Women's and Children's Health. In 2006 she was awarded a CBE for services to medicine and elected Foreign Associate of the US Institute of Medicine. In 2009 she was elected Fellow of the UK Academy of Medical Sciences and received the Prince Mahidol Award in the field of medicine. She is President of the International Health Economics Association for 2012-2013.
