Assessment and Mitigation of the Impact of Global and National Health Funding Reductions

Over many decades, global and domestic health funding has grown and resulted in health services improvements that have improved the health and prolonged the lives of billions. These efforts have benefitted from scientific understanding and evidence, in pursuit of maximum effectiveness and equity. Since agreeing the global development agenda, Sustainable Development Goal 3 has guided practitioners and research towards attaining the full potential for health and well-being for all at all ages.

Recent global political dynamics have, however, disrupted the health agendas of important stakeholders, leading to cuts in funding for global health, domestic health systems, and in health research. The US withdrawal from the WHO for instance, has raised significant concerns on its impact not only in the US health and security but also globally. For high burden disease such as Tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS, proposed cuts may cause up to millions of deaths until 2030, the year targeted in the global development agenda. The impact of the funding reductions is however much broader and stretches well beyond essential health outcomes such as mortality. There are concerns that funding cuts may impact patients, their caregivers and the wider public, as well as healthcare professionals and researchers whose jobs are at risk.

The funding reductions also raise important questions regarding policy and management efforts to mitigate the negative impacts. How can the effects on health outcomes and on well-being be minimized in an equitable manner? Science has mostly regarded the allocation of additional funding and new technologies and processes as is, for instance, apparent in Incremental Cost Effectiveness Ratios and in Innovation frameworks. The development of new methods, sharing of best practices, and other contributions are most welcome to prevent avoidable harm.

In view of the above, the aim of this Research Topic is twofold. First, we aim to publish assessments of the impact of the funding reductions across all relevant domains. Second, we aim to advance scientific understanding of policies and management interventions to mitigate the impact of the funding reductions.

The Research Topic has a broad scientific interest in the urgent challenges caused by health funding reductions. It welcomes contributions from researchers, policy makers and funding bodies across the globe and from all disciplines, within a health services policy and management focus. Given the urgency and lack of funding, rigorously designed assessment or interventions studies may be difficult to conduct. However, various other designs for original research articles are well feasible, such as qualitative research (e.g. based on interviews and focus groups), descriptive quantitative studies reporting on effects of the funding reduction intervention, and modeling studies to analyse possible future mitigation interventions. Moreover, Frontiers in Health Services offers a variety of other article types, such as Community Case Studies, Policy and Practice Reviews, and Brief Research Reports, which may match particularly well with the urgency and impact of this Research Topic.