This report is a user's guide for defining, measuring, and improving the performance of health service delivery organizations. The authors define six core performance domains: quality, efficiency, utilization, access, learning, and sustainability and provide a compendium of metrics that have...

Global health scholarship has failed to adequately consider the “BRIC” cluster of nations - Brazil, Russia, India and China - particularly in the aggregate. An article search with the keywords “BRIC” and “public health” yields just one publication. But these countries have a unique...

This article examines the impact of theWorld Bank’s Safe Motherhood Project (SMP) on health outcomes for Indonesia’s poor. Provincial data from 1990 to 2005 was analyzed combining a difference-in-differences approach in multivariate regression analysis with matching of intervention (SMP) and...

With the Paul Wolfowitz era behind it and new appointee Robert Zoellick at the helm, it is time for the World Bank to better define its role in an increasingly crowded and complex global health architecture, says Jennifer Prah Ruger, health economist and former World Bank speechwriter

Developing countries, home to 84 percent of the world’s population and 92 percent of the burden of disease, have only 29 percent of global gross domestic product and 16 percent of health spending. In the past three decades, levels of and contributors to global health aid have increased at an...

Background: Microcosting is a cost estimation method that requires the collection of detailed data on resources utilized, and the unit costs of those resources in order to identify actual resource use and economic costs. Microcosting findings reflect the true costs to health care systems and to...

The appointment of Paul Wolfowitz to take over as World Bank chief prompted a barrage of criticism from activists concerned about his role in the Iraq war. But are these protests justified? Health economist and former World Bank speechwriter Jennifer Prah Ruger reviews the evidence

In July 2004 the international community will convene in Bangkok, Thailand, for the 15th international AIDS conference. The gathering occurs at an opportune time in global health as just months earlier, the World Health Organization and UNAIDS launched the quot;3 by 5quot; programme a global...

"The Changing Role of the World Bank in Global Health" received numerous comments. In this response I restate the specific aims of the paper and offer comments regarding the Bank's structural adjustment programs and governance structure, its support of privatization and user fees, its...

The World Bank began operations on June 25, 1946. Although it was established to finance European reconstruction after World War II, the bank today is a considerable force in the health, nutrition, and population (HNP) sector in developing countries. Indeed, it has evolved from having virtually...