Work

Building from the HIV Response toward Universal Health Coverage

Year: 2016

Type: article

Abstract: IntroductionUniversal health coverage (UHC) has gained prominence as a global health objective.United Nations (UN) member states endorsed UHC in a 2012 resolution [1] and adopted it as a Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) target in 2015 [2].These global agreements conceptualize UHC as ensuring all people's access to the health services they need, with sufficient quality to be effective, while protecting against the financial risk of out-of-pocket health spending.Global health agencies have proposed monitoring Summary Points• Universal health coverage (UHC) has gained prominence as a global health priority.The UHC movement aims to increase access to quality, needed health services while reducing financial hardship from health spending, particularly in low-and middleincome countries.• As a policy agenda, UHC has been identified primarily with prepayment and risk-pooling programs.While financing policies provide important benefits, increasing access to health services will require broader reforms.• For lessons, the UHC movement should look to the global HIV response, which has confronted many of the same barriers to access in weak health systems.Considerable success on HIV has resulted from innovative approaches that UHC efforts can build upon, in areas including governance, financing, service delivery, political mobilization, accountability, and human rights.• UHC and HIV efforts must capitalize on potential synergies, especially in settings with a high HIV burden and major resource limitations.

Source: PLoS Medicine

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pmed.1002083