“Aligning Public Financial Management and Health Financing” was commissioned by the World Health Organization (WHO) and jointly prepared by Results for Development (R4D) and WHO under the auspices of WHO’s Department of Health Systems Governance and Financing, Health Financing Unit. It is part of the Collaborative Agenda on Fiscal Space, Public Financial Management and Health Financing Policy. Preliminary drafts were presented at the second Collaborative Agenda meeting in Montreux, Switzerland, in April 2016.
This document offers guidance to help health and finance authorities at the country level engage in productive dialogue, assess alignment between a country’s public financial management (PFM) system and health financing system, and work toward a joint policy roadmap to improve alignment. It builds on a paper that considers how PFM and health financing systems can be better aligned in support of universal health coverage (UHC), provides a framework for examining common challenges and offers strategies for addressing those challenges.
These resources can be helpful to an array of stakeholders who are engaged in efforts to move toward UHC by bringing PFM and health financing systems into better alignment:
- Health policymakers who are working to ensure more efficient spending and increased allocation to priority populations, programs and services;
- Public budget officials who are charged with ensuring that expenditures in the health sector are transparent and accountable;
- Health providers who need more flexible financing arrangements so they can better align their resources with population needs;
- External partners and donors who aim to promote a sustainable transition to UHC.
