The WHO Centre for Health Development (WHO Kobe Centre – WKC) conducts research on understanding the unmet need for health and social care among older people. This is essential to identify who is being left behind in efforts to advance global progress towards universal health coverage (UHC). Unmet needs can range from someone being unaware of their needs for care and not getting the care, to someone being aware of their needs but not getting any care or receiving suboptimal care.
On 10-11 June 2024, WKC convened staff from WHO headquarters, regional offices and external research partners from different countries and regions to assess the feasibility of measuring unmet need within and across regions, and to understand regional and country perspectives on the practical value of having those data.
We interviewed a number of participants for their insights on the meeting and this emerging field of study.
A key take-away message for Dr Benson Droti, team leader for health information systems in the WHO Regional Office for Africa (AFRO) was the importance of understanding unmet need for scientists and countries around the world.
“We need to do more to unpack what unmet need is, and how it can be measured, which is the only way that we can ensure we can effectively track unmet need. We can actually leverage the systems that countries have to generate a lot of information on unmet need,” he said.
The African Region has an Open Source ‘one-stop shop’ for health data and information, created 14 years ago, which now has platforms for the Region and each of the 47 countries.
“If we could identify specific indicators to include in the African Health Observatory, we could track them. The Observatory would be the platform for countries to access information on unmet need. The critical importance of tracking unmet need cannot be understated.”
Click here to watch Dr Droti’s interview.
Dr Gabriela Flores, senior health economist, WHO Headquarters remarked on the research WKC has been doing on unmet needs.
“We have a huge knowledge gap, and the Centre’s research on unmet needs and social care is really critical,” she said.
WKC helped to set up the CARETRACK Consortium, and through this collaboration and with the different Regions, it became apparent there was a wealth of data that hadn’t been analysed.
“While there are differences in the way data is collected, what we know can be used to inform policies. The products that WKC will be releasing will be really critical to move forward in policy discussions,” she said.
Click here to watch Dr Flores’s interview.
Dr Jon Cylus, senior health economist, WHO Barcelona Office for Health Systems Financing, commented on the added value of improving global data on unmet needs for health and social care, specifically among older persons.
“Ideally there should be questions on unmet need in household budget surveys so that we can make direct links between households that have unmet need and households that experience catastrophic levels of health spending. This is not possible unless we’re using the same samples. WHO has a really important role, not only in the harmonization of questions and definitions, but also in ensuring that these questions are included in surveys globally.”
Click here to watch Dr Cylus’s interview.
Click here to learn more about what unmet health need is and why it is important to monitor this with WKC’s technical lead, Dr Megumi Rosenberg.
Click here for a video featuring Dr Shereen Hussein, chair of CARETRACK and Director of the Middle East and North Africa Research on Ageing Healthy (MENARAH) Network.
The meeting report can be found here.