Allocating external financing for health: a discrete choice experiment of stakeholder preferences

Grépin, Karen A.; Pinkstaff, Crossley B.; Hole, Arne Risa; Henderson, Klara; Norheim, Ole Frithjof; Røttingen, John-Arne; and Ottersen, Trygve. 2018. Allocating external financing for health: a discrete choice experiment of stakeholder preferences. Health Policy and Planning 33(suppl_1): i24-i30. https://doi.org/10.1093/heapol/czx017

Most donors of external financing for health use allocation policies to determine which countries are eligible to receive financial support and how much support each should receive. Currently, most of these policies place a great deal of weight on income per capita as a determinant of aid allocation but there is increasing interest in putting more weight on other country characteristics in the design of such policies. It is unclear, however, how much weight should be placed on other country characteristics. Using an online discrete choice experiment designed to elicit preferences over country characteristics to guide decisions about the allocation of external financing for health, we find that stakeholders assign a great deal of importance to health inequalities and the burden of disease but put very little weight on income per capita. We also find considerable variation in preferences across stakeholders, with people from low- and middle-income countries putting more weight on the burden of disease and people from high-income countries putting more weight on health inequalities