How do health and health systems contribute to the Sustainable Development Goals?
Health systems do more than just improve health.
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Luigi Siciliani
Professor in Health Economics, University of York, UK
While there is considerable research and policy interest into how factors outside the health system (i.e. social determinants) influence health outcomes, there has historically been less interest in how health and health systems affect other economic and societal objectives. Such evidence can be useful to health policymakers making the case for investing in health systems to demonstrate that health systems do more than just improve health.
The European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies has put together a special issue of the journal Health Policy to explore the evidence on how health and health systems advance the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which provides a helpful conceptual framework for considering economic and societal objectives. The articles each consider a particular SDG and review relevant literature with an emphasis on causal studies to explore the ways in which health and health systems have causal effects on key societal objectives such as poverty reduction, gender equality, climate change, and responsible consumption.
In this presentation I will provide a summary of the findings from the special issue, highlighting areas with the strongest (and weakest) evidence and discuss how this work can be factored into budget negotiations and decisions about resource allocation.
Luigi Siciliani has specialised in the economics of hospitals and has published over 100 articles in peer-reviewed journals. His research interests include waiting times for non-emergency treatment, hospital quality competition, contracting theory applied to health care, pay for performance and coordination between health and social care. He was a member of the European Commission Expert Panel on Effective Ways of Investing in Health in 2017-2022.
Siciliani is an Editor of the Journal of Health Economics. He was chair (2020-22) and co-chair (2017-19) of the Kenneth Arrow Award Committee for best paper in the field of health economics. He is affiliated with the Centre for Health Economics and the Economics of Health and Social Care Research Unit. Prior to joining the University of York in 2003, he worked at the OECD in Paris for two years to conduct an international project on policies to reduce waiting times in healthcare.
Luigi Siciliani is the guest editor of a special issue in Health Policy with the same title: How do Health and Health Systems contribute to the Sustainable Development Goals? Education, employment, poverty and growth.
Moderator: Oddvar Kaarbøe
Open lecure
This lecture is open to all!
