Five Decades of Health Resource Tracking and Beyond

The following sections are included:The World Health Organization published its first systematic comparison of national health expenditure estimates across countries in 1967. In the five decades since then, health resource tracking (HRT) has developed into a sub-field within health financing analyses, encompassing a range of approaches to collect and analyze information about the flow of funds in the health sector.This chapter provides an overview of prominent HRT approaches using a simple typology that first distinguishes between HRT measurement activities that are descriptive in nature and HRT analytical frameworks that attempt to address specific research or policy questions. The activities in the former class can next be categorized according to geographical scope (spending within a country versus development assistance globally), the kinds of financing (for example public spending, development assistance, or all), and sectoral focus (the health sector as a whole or a specific disease or health area).The Resource Tracking and Management (RTM) approach, which is the focus on this book, combines traditional HRT approaches with additional analytical methods to produce information and evidence of relevance to policymakers.