Financing Prevention: Unlocking Investment in a Healthier Future
The Challenge
Prevention is one of the most powerful tools available to health systems, yet it remains chronically underfunded. Despite compelling evidence that preventive health interventions are cost-effective, the majority of healthcare spending continues to flow toward acute, reactive care rather than upstream action that keeps people healthy in the first place.
Health systems worldwide are facing growing pressure from rising chronic disease rates, ageing populations, and escalating costs. The case for prevention is clear. The barriers to acting on it: political, structural, and financial, are equally well-documented. What has been missing is a rigorous, actionable framework for overcoming them.
That is what this programme sets out to provide.
What We Are Doing
The Financing Prevention programme is a collaborative research initiative led by OHE, designed to tackle the root causes of underinvestment in preventive health. Rather than asking whether prevention works, this programme focuses on how to fund it.
Working with a cross-sector coalition of funding partners and an independent Expert Council, OHE is exploring the full landscape of alternative financing and contracting models for prevention: from social impact bonds and outcomes-based contracts to innovative cross-sector funding arrangements and new models of public-private collaboration.
The aim is to go beyond diagnosis and deliver practical, actionable recommendations that health systems, governments, and private partners can adopt.
Key Research Questions
What are the most promising alternative models for financing preventive health interventions, and what evidence exists for their feasibility and effectiveness?
What structural, political, and economic barriers currently prevent prevention from being prioritised — and how can they be overcome?
How can outcomes-based contracting and payment innovation be designed to make prevention investable for a wider range of funders?
What can be learned from international best practice, and what principles should guide the design and delivery of prevention financing at scale?
How can the economic case for prevention be communicated in ways that shift decision-making at the government, system, and organisational level?
Why It Matters
Investing in prevention is not just good public health — it is sound economics. The costs of inaction compound over time: greater demand on acute services, lower workforce productivity, and diminished quality of life for populations. Shifting even a fraction of health system resources toward prevention can generate returns that dwarf the initial investment.
But unlocking that shift requires more than evidence. It requires new financing architectures, new contracting models, and new coalitions of funders willing to invest across the long time horizons that prevention demands. This programme is designed to build exactly that.
How It Is Delivered
Research outputs from this programme include:
- In-depth white papers and policy briefings
- Roundtable discussions with senior policymakers and stakeholders
- Webinars and public forums for broader dissemination
- Media engagement to raise the profile of prevention financing on the policy agenda
Funded By
This programme has received collaborative unrestricted funding from GSK and Lilly.
Get Involved
Charlotte Ashton Director of External Affairs, OHE cashton@ohe.org