As the world of health evolves, leaders need dynamic data and tools that help them prioritize investment and make more informed decisions. For decades, health economists have studied the relationship between health systems and the economy to understand the role of health in societal growth and development. Despite an extensive body of research linking health to positive socioeconomic outcomes at the population level, leaders continue to struggle to prioritize health investment among other shorter-term priorities, which leads to questioning the value of healthcare spending overall. This, in turn, creates unsustainable and vulnerable health systems that are unable to achieve the health outcomes needed to drive broader socioeconomic goals. In countries like the US, this is exacerbated by fragmentation and complexity.
In order to shift momentum towards more strategic and effective investment in health, especially in the wake of the covid-19 pandemic, it is clear that leaders need to engage in more dynamic and innovative thinking about how to generate value from health and healthcare, defined simply as better outcomes at lower cost. Notable improvements in data collection over the past few decades enable the generation of new insights that can guide leaders to make more informed and effective decisions about how to manage and invest resources. Improved data usage can also generate a clearer picture of what can be achieved when these decisions are enacted.
With this in mind, Economist Impact embarked on an ambitious, mixed methods research program to uncover the mechanisms underlying the complex relationship between health and wealth, and the ways in which leaders can make thoughtful decisions to maximize health, and particularly healthcare systems, as an investment.
The research was guided by four core questions:
- What is the relationship between investment in healthcare systems, population health outcomes and the wider economy?
- What implications do these relationships have in guiding choices around resources for health? How do you maximize returns?
- What analytical methods already exist to optimize healthcare expenditure and investment? How have they been successful (or unsuccessful) in shaping policy and resource use to date?
- What other contributing factors might we need to consider now and in the future which impact the relationship between health and economic growth?
Going beyond traditional associations between life expectancy and GDP, this research seeks to generate a more nuanced understanding of linkages between health investments, health outcomes and economic growth, using US state-level data over a 15-year time horizon (2004-2019). This unique model is intended to serve as a platform to engage with various stakeholders in new ways of thinking about how we fund, structure, and shape health systems as a critical strategy for economic growth and resilience.
