Disease Control Priorities 3 (DCP3) provides a review of evidence on cost-effective interventions to address the burden of disease in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Building on its predecessors, DCP1 (1993) and DCP2 (2006), DCP3 brought together over 500 scholars, policymakers, and technical experts.
The DCP3 findings and model packages have been published in 9 volumes. The volumes present a systematic and comparable economic evaluation of selected interventions, delivery platforms, and policies, based on new analytical methods. DCP3 goes beyond traditional economic evaluation used in DCP1 and DCP2 by considering non-health dimensions in outcomes, such as equity and financial protection.
Volumes 1-8 are structured around 21 packages addressing four health and health services clusters, while Volume 9 presents model UHC packages as a starting point for country specific analysis of priorities.
Focusing on the three dimensions of UHC, such as expanding population coverage, providing access to high-quality health services and protecting against financial risk, the DCP3 model packages include:
- an Essential UHC Package (EUHC) of 218 interventions;
- a high-priority package (HPP) of 108 health service interventions for early implementation in countries with a limited fiscal space for health;
- a package of intersectoral policies for health (29 core policies for early implementation and an expanded list of 71 policies) grouped into four categories: fiscal, regulatory, built environment, and information.
The interventions were selected using a set of criteria for prioritizing essential health interventions covering disease burden, evidence of impact, cost-effectiveness, financial risk protection, equity, and feasibility of implementation.
The DCP3 products have undergone a comprehensive independent evaluation, which concluded that the packages have a unique value for decision making, especially when translated to local contexts, and are “filling a gap in technical guidance not currently met”.
Strengthening the capacity of evidence-based decision-making
The DCP3 secretariat and collaborators worked with global, regional and national partners in Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, China and the Middle East to enhance local capacity for conducting economic evaluations of the prevention and treatment of health conditions through training workshops and collaborative research. In Ethiopia, DCP collaborators also worked directly with partners to apply the DCP3 methods and results as relevant to support health priority setting. At the regional and global levels, DCP has carried out strategically targeted policy discussions, building on partnerships with WHO/EMRO to facilitate uptake of DCP3 evidence by Ministers of Health, Transportation, Social Welfare, and others. Together, these activities advanced the development of improved economic tools and dispersed capacity for evidence-based priority setting for health and connected decisionmakers with economic information to guide regional and national level policymaking.