Promoting Global Health and Social Protection for a Life in Dignity

This research and policy advisory project provides strategic evidence and analysis to inform and strengthen German development cooperation in the areas of global health and social protection. It identifies concrete policy options for BMZ and its partners to enhance the effectiveness, coherence, and impact of interventions in global health and social protection. By combining empirical research, policy dialogue, and targeted advisory outputs, the project generates actionable insights on how financing, governance, and service delivery can jointly strengthen health, reduce poverty, and mitigate migration pressures.

Project Lead:
Francesco Burchi
Christoph Strupat

Project Team:
Stefanie Roost
Tekalign Gutu Sakketa
Srinivasa Srigiri
Paula von Haaren

Financing:
Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development

Time frame:
2026 - 2028 / ongoing

Co-operation Partner:

Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development

Project description

Low- and middle-income countries face a new era of overlapping pressures: intensifying climate risks, social conflicts, growing antimicrobial resistance (AMR), tightening fiscal space, and increasingly fragmented multilateral cooperation. These dynamics strain health and social protection systems precisely when households most need reliable financial protection and access to quality services. Large population shares, especially informal workers, women, and children, remain under-covered. Climate-related shocks such as heatwaves, floods, and droughts escalate morbidity, mortality, and costs; AMR erodes the effectiveness of health care services; and budget volatility heightens the risk of poverty reversals, instability, and migration pressures.

In this context, strong health and social protection systems constitute the foundation for promoting well-being, eliminating poverty, and addressing other forms of deprivation. Inclusive health systems protect households from catastrophic expenditures, keep people healthy and productive, and contribute to stability and economic development. Social protection tackles poverty, enables people to manage risks, strengthens social cohesion and trust in institutions, and helps prevent displacement and conflict. To exploit the individual and synergistic effects of policies in these two areas, it is necessary to move beyond short-term crisis response, exclusively financed by international donors, with none or little country ownership. Building resilient health and social protection systems implies securing domestic financing and risk-pooling mechanisms, strengthening governance across sectors and levels, and implementing practical, scalable interventions that effectively reach those most at risk.

This research and policy advisory project provides strategic evidence and analysis to inform and strengthen German development cooperation in these areas. It identifies concrete policy options for BMZ and its partners to enhance the effectiveness, coherence, and impact of interventions in health and social protection. By combining empirical research, policy dialogue, and targeted advisory outputs, the project generates actionable insights on how financing, governance, and service delivery can jointly strengthen resilience, reduce poverty, and mitigate migration pressures. The respective research team members contribute to their specific scientific communities within two work packages (WPs).

Work Package 1 (Global Health) focuses on the levers that make health systems resilient. First, it examines domestic revenue mobilization and risk-pooling options—such as health taxes, insurance contributions, and strategic purchasing—to reduce aid dependence and expand effective coverage. Second, it investigates the governance and institutional dimensions of climate change and health, analyzing how cross-sectoral coordination and policy coherence can strengthen national and subnational responses to climate-related health risks. Building on this, it also quantifies how access to and quality of care can serve as climate adaptation, assessing to what extent improved availability, affordability (including health insurance or free health care policies), and service quality mitigate climate-related health impacts, particularly for women and children. Third, it addresses AMR through governance and provider behavior: identifying One Health coordination mechanisms that work at national and subnational levels and generating rigorous evidence on antimicrobial stewardship in pharmacies, including the know–do gap and scalable training and incentive designs.

Work Package 2 (Social Protection) focuses on how to increase the effectiveness of social protection systems in order to address the current multiple challenges. First, it investigates the little-explored question of how access to (and the quality of) social protection systems or specific schemes – such as cash transfers, public works programs or health insurance – influences people’s willingness to migrate abroad. The plan is to focus on countries that are characterized by intensive international migration. Second, it examines the role that social protection plays in climate change adaptation and how the specific design of these instruments can address climate resilience. Third, it concentrates on a fundamental social protection scheme, public works programs with the aim of generating empirical evidence of their multiple benefits for their direct beneficiaries as well as the overall communities in which they are implemented. 

Publications

Events

From Climate Negotiations to Resilient Health Systems

Advancing Climate and Health Resilience

(How) does social protection promote climate change mitigation and adaptation?

Innovating One Health Governance for Global and Local Action

Health Economics, Development and Climate Change

Pandemic prevention: a planetary health perspective

Putting Policy into Practice

Re-considering international health data sharing rules for a new Pandemic Treaty.