Viewpoint

Public health, universal health coverage, and Sustainable

Development Goals: can they coexist?
Harald Schmidt, Lawrence O Gostin, Ezekiel J Emanuel

In her 2012 reconrmation speech as WHO DirectorGeneral, Dr Margaret Chan asserted: universal coverage
is the single most powerful concept that public health
has to oer. It is our ticket to greater eciency and better
quality. It is our saviour from the crushing weight of
chronic noncommunicable diseases that now engulf
the globe.1 The UN General Assembly is currently
considering proposals for Sustainable Development
Goals (SDGs), succeeding the Millennium Development
Goals.2 SDG 3, focusing on health, specically includes
universal health coverage (UHC) among its targets.
Unquestionably, UHC is timely and fundamentally
important.35 However, its promotion also entails substantial risks. A narrow focus on UHC could emphasise
expansion of access to health-care services over equitable
improvement of health outcomes through action across
all relevant sectorsespecially public health interventions,
needed to eectively address non-communicable diseases
(NCDs).
WHO rst endorsed UHC in its 2005 resolution on
sustainable health nancing, calling on states to provide
access to [necessary] promotive, preventive, curative and
rehabilitative health interventions for all at an aordable
cost.6 The resolution and its UHC concept rmly and
narrowly centre on health insurance packages nanced
through pre-payment. This narrow understanding is
echoed in major recent reviews of 65 empirical studies
on UHC progress.79 The proposed SDGs also separate
population-level public health measures from UHC,
addressing the former as distinct targets, not under
UHC.2 Yet, a broader understanding encompassing nonclinical measures can also be found in relevant WHO
documents.4,5 Independent of UHCs conceptual indeterminacy, clinical health services are an essential part
of UHC,4,5,10 and are likely to dominate post-2015 state
health system improvements. In implementing UHC,
how can we ensure continued emphasis on the full
spectrum of public health interventions?
Unmediated, a narrow UHC focus risks that ve
distinct pressures prioritise expanded curative clinical
services at the expense of individual and population-level
health promotion, prevention,11 and action on social
determinants of health.12 The risk is that this focus leads
to more health-care services, but worse overall health
outcomes, with less equitably distributed benets.
First, unbalanced, the introduction of UHC usually
increases inequity by disproportionately beneting the
wealthiest groups.13 Although there are some exceptions,
UHC progress analyses from 11 countries at dierent
levels of development suggest poorer people often lose
out initially. UHC expansion generally begins with civil

servants or urban formal sector workers;9 wealthier, well

connected urban populations demand and receive
clinical services, while poorer and rural populations do
not. Some public health interventionssuch as nutrition
labelling, or information campaigns on behavioural NCD
risksalso tend to disproportionately benet wealthier
groups, raising similar concerns. But other populationlevel measures such as clean air acts or road-safety
improvements benet the whole population from the
outset, ensuring greater equity. Targeted population-level
measures can balance temporary or persistent inequities
arising from the introduction of UHC.
Second, the clinical sector commonly tends to emphasise
specialist curative over health promotion or preventive
primary care. Interventions such as dialysis, organ
transplants, or new cancer therapiesfrequently introduced under UHCoften have the irresistible aura of the
rule of rescue, enabling the instant saving of otherwise
doomed lives. But as the addition of dialysis to the public
benet package in Thailand illustrates, doing so can entail
substantial budgetary opportunity costs with unclear
sustainability,14 and deprioritisation of primary and
secondary prevention,15 undermining benets to far more
people than typically benet from high-cost curative care.
Third, political and societal pressures can skew budgets
towards more advanced, costly clinical services at the
expense of public health. Such shifts rarely take the form
of pure zero-sum situations, in which one sector gains
what the other loses, but are embedded in complex
allocation decisions. In Thailand, the initial 2002
Universal Coverage Scheme spending formula reserved
20% of the budget for health promotion and prevention
at individual and family level (personal communication,
Viroj Tangcharoensathien, International Health Policy
Program, Ministry of Public Health, Nonthaburi,
Thailand). With the decision to cover high-cost interventions including antiretroviral therapy in 2004, dialysis
and kidney transplantation in 2008, and to account for
other newly covered services, ination, and increased
outpatient and inpatient service uptake, between 2001
and 2012 the per head budget was increased by 3% per
year above ination. But with reduced prevention and
health promotion unit cost, the share of the ring-fenced
budget decreased from the initial 20% to 14% over the
past several years (although it has recently been decided
to return to previous levels). While the clinical benet
package was expanded, no new health promotion and
prevention services were added in the past decade
(personal communication, Viroj Tangcharoensathien).
Similarly, Colombia introduced UHC in 1993. Since
then, health plan budgets increased annually by 64%

www.thelancet.com Published online June 30, 2015 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(15)60244-6

Published Online
June 30, 2015
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/
S0140-6736(15)60244-6
Department of Medical Ethics
and Health Policy
(H Schmidt PhD,
Prof E J Emanuel MD), and
Center for Health Incentives
and Behavioral Economics
(H Schmidt), Perelman School
of Medicine, and Wharton
School (Prof E J Emanuel),
University of Pennsylvania,
Philadelphia, PA, USA; and
ONeill Institute for National
and Global Health Law and
WHO Collaborating Center on
Public Health Law and Human
Rights, Georgetown University,
Washington, DC, USA
(Prof L O Gostin JD)
Correspondence to:
Dr Harald Schmidt, Department
of Medical Ethics and Health
Policy, Perelman School of
Medicine, University of
Pennsylvania, Philadelphia,
PA 19104-3308, USA
[email protected]
For more on the Sustainable
Development Goals see https://
sustainabledevelopment.un.org/
focussdgs.html

Viewpoint

above ination. Public health budgets, administered at

the municipal level, stayed tied to ination (personal
communication, Ramiro Guerrero, Centro PROESA,
Universidad Icesi, Cali, Colombia). Secondary prevention,
provided mainly through the insurance system, is
supposed to be funded by a dedicated budget, separated
from curative care. However, the prevention budget by
itself is insucient, and in practice health plans typically
pool budgets. Demands for curative care are usually more
pressing than preventive ones, and as a result preventive
care receives less than it needs (personal communication,
Ramiro Guerrero). The relative stagnation of Colombias
public health funds reects the priority that curative
clinical services have had, as well as political distrust in
the eciency of municipal governance, including the
identication of health needs.16 Clearly articulated broad
public health policy with the same political support as
clinical health can help to avoid such situations, but in
practice is rarely achieved.
Additionally, as the USA and other high-income
countries demonstrate, clinical services attract the bulk of
resources in large part because powerful constituencies
on the supply side support their prioritisation. Physicians,
hospitals, and other stakeholders, including patient
interest groups, campaign for prioritisation of clinical
services.11 But no constituencies have similar leverage in
public health, and the asymptomatic public rarelyand
less passionatelydemand population-level or individuallevel health promotion or prevention measures.
Fourth, most low-income and even middle-income
countries lack a sucient trained health-care workforce.9
And even if employment opportunities under UHC were
scaled up equally in clinical and non-clinical sectors,
clinical services are more attractive: compensation is
typically higher, and clinical training generally makes
physicians and nurses more marketable in high-income
countries, further threatening workforce retention.3
Finally, many of the targets under SDG 3 need
population-level health interventions. For instance, targets
for maternal and newborn mortality, communicable
diseases and NCDs, alcohol, and narcotics (3.13.5),
sexual and reproductive health (3.7), and tobacco (3a) call
for broader, largely non-clinical measures, including
education, improved sanitation, hygiene, nutrition,
bednets, taxation, and restrictions or bans on selling and
promoting alcohol, narcotics, and tobacco. Similarly,
targets for road trac (3.6) and air, water, soil pollution
(3.9) fall entirely outside clinical services.
The SDG proposal identies UHC as a distinct target.
But UHC is a means, not an end in itself. The ultimate
goal must be improvement of health. Unfortunately,
most population-level health targets do not include policy
vehicles that can help to accomplish them.
Tobacco provides a case example. Lung cancer is among
the most devastating NCDs. Globally, deaths from
smoking are expected to increase greatly in low-income
countries. In the 20th century, tobacco use killed around
2

100 million people worldwide; ten times more1 billion

will die in the 21st century. By 2030, low-income countries
are estimated to bear more than 80% of tobacco-attributable
deaths.17 Under UHCs focus on clinical services, responses generally centre on nicotine-replacement therapy,
smoking-cessation programmes, surgery, radiation, and
chemotherapy for lung cancer. Clinicians are likely to
screen for and treat cancer, but not prevent it.
Although it is important to help ill people to regain
health, it is clearly more ethical and ecient to keep them
healthy in the rst place. The preferred response is
therefore to stringently implement the Framework
Convention on Tobacco Control18as identied under
target 3a, the only policy vehicle to achieve a non-clinical
public health goaland WHOs MPOWER strategy, which
chiey includes protections from tobacco smoke; health
risk warnings; enforcements of advertising, promotion,
and sponsorship bans; and raising taxes. Particularly costeective measures such as taxation would furthermore
generate revenue to fund both population-level and
individual-level public health interventions.18 These
measures are entirely outside the clinical-service realm and
should not be sacriced to increase budgets for detection
and treatment of tobacco-related cancers under UHC.
Looking ahead, policy makers must make complex
prioritisations in moving towards UHC. This process
includes striking the right balance between individuallevel curative services, and individual-level and populationlevel health promotion and preventive measures.
Three steps can help to ensure that increased attention to
clinical services will not undermine, but support, robust
action across the full range of public health measures and
social determinants of health.12
First, eective cross-departmental action is needed. The
risk of UHC unduly skewing the agenda becomes higher
if health departments are the central focus for implementation of UHC. Optimally, states should take stock of
the broader context of government action on health,
including food, housing, educational, environmental, and
tax policies. Eective communication and concerted
action among health, nance, enterprise, and other
departments is therefore imperative.11,12,19 Relaunching and
structuring of health departments as departments of
public health can be one way of avoiding an unduly
narrow focus. The Health in All Polices (HiAP) strategy
endorsed by WHO in 2009can provide a helpful
structural vehicle. Among other things, HiAP requires
public health sta presence on relevant committees of
other departments, health impact assessments for nonhealth policies, and joint cross-departmental health targets
and evaluations.20 Progress with implementation of
intersectoral strategies11,19 has been disappointingly slow.
Addition of HiAP as a SDG target would complement
other approaches, further focusing attention.
Second, xed and distinct budgets are important. As
noted, political and societal pressures favouring curative
services under UHC can harm health promotion and

www.thelancet.com Published online June 30, 2015 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(15)60244-6

Viewpoint

prevention. Fixed and distinct budgets are the most

appropriate way to avoid cannibalism and ensure
sustainability and peaceful coexistence. Fixed budgets also
focus attention on determining value for money.
Thailands approach of ring-fencing 20% of the UHC
budget for health promotion and prevention is a useful
model. Budgets should be sensitive to a countrys level of
development and be driven by epidemiological, economic,
and ethical analyses, prioritising the most cost-eective
and equitable measureseven if this means deprioritising
curative services. In principle, the same approach would
be desirable for population-level public health measures.
But given that these frequently fragmented measures11
span many government departments and civil society
sectors, a careful accounting of public health measures
will also be necessary. This process again emphasises the
importance of an approach such as HiAP, and robust
analyses of alignments of eorts within a broad public
health strategy.
Third, a robust public health workforce should be
ensured. SDGs target 3c seeks to increase substantially...
recruitment, development, training and retention of the
health workforce. As with UHC, there are risks and
opportunities. Specically, capacity building must not
narrowly centre on the clinical context, should promote
the public health workforce development, and be
implemented in ways that reduce brain-drain likelihood.
Promising strategies include locally relevant training
with a focus on endemic conditions, and practising
of medicine within country-specic resource scarcity
constraints. This approach promotes professional
prestige of local practice, equips workers with realistic
expectations, and reduces chances that clinical medicine
training is chosen predominantly as a stepping stone
to work in high-income countries.21 Externally sponsored
training should generally take the form of so-called
sandwich training, with most time spent in the sponsorednot the sponsorscountry.22
The global move towards UHC by ensuring aordable
access to essential health benets is urgent and long
overdue. The current enthusiasm and momentum is
encouraging. However, the ultimate challenge for policy
makers is not merely to improve clinical services, but to
achieve equitable health outcome improvements through
genuine integration of individual and population-level
health promotion and preventative eorts with curative
services. Future UHC evaluations should include
assessments of the extent to which this integration is
accomplished11with particular attention to the distribution of benets across groupsand not, as major
current work,79 be limited to the clinical side.
Contributors
HS has conceived of and wrote the rst draft of the manuscript. LOG
and EJE reviewed and revised subsequent versions and discussed all
substantive points in person or by email.
Declaration of interests
We declare no competing interests.

Acknowledgments
We thank Anne Barnhill, Daniel Cotlear, Leonardo Cubillos-Turriago,
Eric A Friedman, Ramiro Guerrero, Felicia Marie Knaul Windish,
Joe Kutzin, Trygve Ottersen, Govind Persad, Jennifer Prah Ruger,
Viroj Tangcharoensathien, Suwit Wibulpolprasert, and
Petronella Vergeer for comments on earlier versions of the manuscript
and crucial help with specic factual queries. We are also grateful for
helpful comments from the three anonymous reviewers that enabled us
to clarify several central points. All errors are the authors alone.
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www.thelancet.com Published online June 30, 2015 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(15)60244-6