22
Jan

The Lancet established a Commission on Investing in Health (CIH) in 2012 to mark the occasion of the 20th anniversary of publication of the World Bank’s 1993 World Development Report, “Investing in Health.” The commission was chaired by Lawrence Summers, former US Treasury Secretary and President Emeritus of Harvard University, and co-chaired by Dean Jamison at the University of Washington. Summers was the Chief Economist at the World Bank who commissioned WDR93 and Jamison led the report’s development. The Lancet published the first report of the CIH in 2013, titled “Global Health 2035: a world converging within a generation”  A particular finding of the report pointed to the technical and financial feasibility of a ‘grand convergence’ whereby most countries could achieve, by 2035, the low levels of maternal, child and infectious disease mortality that had been achieved by the best performing middle-income countries. The report endorsed the general movement toward (publicly financed) universal health coverage to achieve both better health outcomes and financial protection of populations. CIH published another report  Alma Ata at 40 years: reflections from the Lancet Commission on Investing in Health’ in 2018.

Rising geopolitical tensions, challenges to globalization, violent conflicts, climate change, population aging, and, most significantly, the COVID-19 pandemic have defined the years subsequent to publication of the second report. Given that 2023 marks the ten-year anniversary of CIH 1.0, and that the global development landscape has changed so much during this past decade, The Lancet invited the CIH to develop a CIH 3.0 report to assess the state of global health in a post-COVID world. The report is expected to be published in mid-2024.

One specific topic that the CIH will cover is on pandemic preparedness and response (PPR). This will cover what we have learned over the recent decades, including from COVID-19, about national and global policies for preventing and preparing for pandemics.