In spite of growing interest in socioeconomic differentials in health outcomes and access to health services, little has been written about methodologies for assessing the impact of equity-enhancing policies or programs.
Strategic partnerships with civil society support resource mobilization efforts, amplify the impact of equity-focused policy advocacy, strengthen the reach and impact of services and programmes for the worst deprived children and communities, and ensure results are sustainable.
Evidence of impact on equity, health resource utilization and priority of interventions were all scored with a median of three.
While there is room for debate over principles, immediate and significant challenges remain in the practical scale-up of interventions and in the measurement of impact on equity for specific diseases [ 51, 52].
The delivery of interventions must address: women's health disparities as determinants of preterm birth and stillbirth; improving measurements of impact on equity in coverage; balancing maternal and newborn outcomes in choosing interventions; and understanding the personal and cross-cultural experiences of preterm birth and stillbirth among women, families and communities.
The implementation of such strategies, combined with follow-up studies on the reliability of ratings, could identify strategies that have a real impact on equity of access to care.
These include premium costs and collection methods, the impact on equity of variations in benefits packages, the payment mechanism used to reimburse providers, and the impact of different financing methods on health outcomes.
Consideration of potential benefit also needs to take account of the costs of service redesign, the resource use associated with programmes of this nature, the potential for improvement in patient outcomes and the impact on equity of access.
37 Unsurprisingly, the leading five challenges ranked according to their potential for reduction of disease burden, impact on equity, immediacy of impact, and feasibility— focused on improving access to evidence-based care and building the mental health skills of all health care personnel.
Examples would be the impact on equity of decentralization policies, or the roles played by conflicting policy actors in scaling up of services.
