The Commission on Investing in Health
In 1993, the World Bank published the World Development Report (WDR 1993), Investing in Health, under the leadership of chief economist Lawrence Summers. One of the most widely cited publications in the Bank’s history, the report demonstrated that well-chosen, evidence-based health expenditures were an investment not only in health, but also in economic prosperity. It also argued for additional resources to address high-burden diseases.
To mark the twentieth anniversary of WDR 1993, the Lancet Commission on Investing in Health was launched in December 2012. It was chaired by Lawrence H. Summers, and co-chaired by Dean T. Jamison, lead author of WDR 1993. For the first report of the Commission on Investing in Health (CIH 1.0), the Commissioners were an independent group of 25 leading economists and global health experts from around the world. Five years later, in 2018, a second report was published in the Lancet (CIH 2.0), called “Alma-Ata at 40: reflections from the Lancet Commission on Investing in Health.
On October 15, 2024, we will publish a third report (CIH 3.0), called “Global Health 2050,” which identifies opportunities for investment in health in the post-COVID era that can succeed despite multiple headwinds, including rising geopolitical tensions and increasingly manifest climate change. For CIH 3.0, there is an international group of 49 Commissioners and a high-level Advisory Committee chaired by Muhammad Ali Pate, Nigeria’s Minister of Health and Social Welfare.
The Secretariat for CIH 3.0 is housed at the Center for Policy Impact in Global Health in the Duke Global Health Institute, Duke University, and the University of Bergen Centre for Ethics and Priority Setting in Health, Norway.
