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Ecuador’s public officials are better poised to develop and implement more efficient and equitable health policies thanks to a two-year study conducted by Antonio Trujillo, associate professor of health services administration, and his colleagues Gustavo Angeles from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Alexandra Lastra from the Secretaria del Frente Social in Ecuador.
Angeles, Trujillo and Lastra used results from a National Household Survey collected in 2004 on 52,000 Ecuadorians to obtain information about their health and use of medical care. They then conducted a Benefit Incidence Analysis to evaluate whether or not the country’s public health expenditure was reaching its poorer citizens.
Their findings suggest that expenditure by Ecuador’s Ministry of Public Health mainly benefits poorer members of society, while expenditure by the Ecuadorian Social Security Institute mainly benefits wealthier members.
Trujillo presented these findings, as well as policy suggestions, at a meeting in Quito, Ecuador, on May 23, 2006. The study was sponsored by the MEASURE Evaluation Project, a USAID-funded project.
Among the attendees were the country’s secretary of health; secretary of finance; secretary of social programs; more than 100 analysts from public institutions, universities and nonprofit agencies; and members of USAID, the World Bank, the Inter-American Bank and UNICEF.
Trujillo said a written report of the study titled, “Is public health expenditure in Ecuador progressive or regressive?,” will be published in the International Journal of Public Policy in December 2006.
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