BMC Global and Public Health is calling for submissions to our Collection on the challenges and approaches to financing and advancing universal health coverage and health equity. Health financing is a basic requirement for health systems to function. It includes raising and providing enough resources for health, pooling the funds, and allocating them wisely so that the services delivered meet the health needs of a population. Governments across the globe have agreed to work towards universal health coverage (UHC) to ensure everyone can access healthcare without facing financial hardship by 2030.
Major improvements in health financing will be required to achieve meaningful progress on UHC. The amount of government spending on health, i.e., health expenditure, has crucial public health implications. Inadequate government spending on health can result in a lack of quality health services, cost barriers that discourage people from accessing necessary care, or even financial catastrophe, leading to discontinued healthcare utilization. There is also significant heterogeneity in people's vulnerability to constantly changing health financing policies. The rising health needs of populations and increased healthcare expenditure pose a significant health equity challenge.
To capture the global situation, experiences, efforts, and novel approaches in this area, BMC Global and Public Health is pleased to announce a call for papers for our upcoming collection entitled 'Health financing to advance universal health coverage and health equity – challenges and novel approaches,' guest edited by Dr. Samir Garg, from the State Health Resource Centre, Chhattisgarh, Raipur, India and Dr Chaw-Yin Myint, MB, BS, MPH, PhD, RWS Medical Services, Myanmar.
We are now inviting the submission of manuscripts of outstanding interest covering the breadth of studies that are focused on health financing challenges that countries face and on approaches that can help them in making progress on the goal of UHC. Topics include:
- Health financing needs for UHC and actual status of spending
- Fiscal barriers in government health expenditure and ways to overcome them
- Evidence for rising healthcare costs and approaches to improve cost-effectiveness
- Strategies for appropriate allocation of resources to make the best gains in health equity and UHC
- Novel evaluation methods to assess health financing in health systems
We encourage work from local, regional and global partnerships and collaboration among scientists from multi-disciplinary fields and using multiple methodologies. We ask that authors be attentive to the use of non-stigmatizing/preferred language in their manuscripts as outlined in relevant language guidelines for their respective fields.
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