Resource Type: Report
Authors: Prince Mahidol Award Conference Secretariat
Published: 2016

Resource Description:

The Prince Mahidol Award Conference (PMAC) is an annual international conference focusing on policy-related health issues of global significance. The conference is hosted by the Prince Mahidol Award Foundation, the Thai Ministry of Public Health, Mahidol University and other global partners where their institutional mandates are relevant to the Conference theme. It is an international policy forum that Global Health Partners, public, private and civil society organizations, can co-own and use for driving global health agenda.

Universal health coverage (UHC) is high on the global agenda as a means to ensure population access to health services and financial risk protection. UHC is endorsed as one of the health related Sustainable development Goals. In most countries where current access to essential health care is limited, introducing UHC prompts serious concerns among government leaders on the growing expenditures and demands for public resources. As such, priority setting is indispensable and has been applied at various levels, to ensure that finite health resources are used in the most cost-effective ways, to provide a high quality and appropriate package of healthcare for the population.

Priority setting in the PMAC theme encourages the use of evidence, transparency, and participation in making decision on resource use. Although priority setting cannot avoid politics, evidence should come first and politics makes decision based on these informed evidence.