Governments of low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) are widely implementing performance-based financing (PBF) to improve healthcare services. However, it is unclear whether PBF provides good value for money compared to status quo or other interventions aimed at strengthening the healthcare...

Background: Measuring progress towards financial risk protection for the poorest is essential within the framework of Universal Health Coverage. The study assessed the level of out-of-pocket expenditure and factors associated with excessive out-of-pocket expenditure among the ultra-poor who had...

Background: Antigen-based rapid diagnostic tests (Ag-RDT) have been implemented in hospitals and nursing homes to screen for infectious individuals without symptoms suggestive of SARS-CoV-2 infections and to prevent entry into these high-risk settings. Despite their benefits for screening, the...

This technical note presents a comparative analysis of Latin America's fragmented health systems. It provides a detailed account of health system fragmentation along six dimensions (organizations, risk pooling, eligibility, benefits, premium/contributions, payments) and the effects of historical...

Compared to neighboring countries, the Philippines has high fertility rates and a low prevalence of modern-method contraception use. The Philippine government faces political and cultural barriers to addressing family planning needs, but also legal barriers erected by its own policies. We...

Decentralization has long been advocated as a desirable process for improving health systems. Nevertheless, we still lack a sufficient analytical framework for systematically studying how decentralization can achieve this objective. We do not have adequate means of analyzing the three key...