Global Public Goods and Global Functions for Health: A New Brief from the Partnership
As debates about reforming the international health system intensify, the Partnership has published a new brief examining two concepts that are central to those debates but frequently confused: Global Public Goods (GPGs) and global health functions.
The aim of this brief is to revisit the concept of GPGs in health and explore how it differs from global health functions — and why that distinction matters for effective reform of the international system.
GPGs are goods — products, shared frameworks, policies, infrastructure, norms or conditions — whose benefits are “non-excludable” and “non-rivalrous”. Once provided, no country can be excluded from them, and one country's use does not diminish another's.
In contrast to GPGs, global health functions are the activities that the international ecosystem for health performs. Some, but not all, of these functions produce GPGs. The conflating of the two terms is not just an academic debate – it has real consequences for prioritization, governance, and financing.
Loose definitions of GPGs and global functions may perpetuate the overly expansive mandates of existing global institutions in need of reform, misaligned financing as ODA declines, duplication between global, regional, and national actors, and misguided prioritization in reform processes.
Conceptual clarity around these concepts will support efforts to refocus the international ecosystem for health on its comparative advantages and added value. This may include strengthening the international system’s role in pandemic preparedness, norm-setting, promoting research, setting surveillance standards, and market shaping.