ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Priority-setting in global health

Hello there!

Priority-setting in global health means deciding which health issues are the most important to focus on and how to address them. It's like picking what games you want to play during playtime, but instead of games, it's about health problems that need to be fixed.

Imagine we have a big basket full of different toys. We can't play with all of them at the same time, so we need to choose which ones we want to play with first. Global health is a bit like that basket, but instead of toys, it's filled with different health issues like malaria, cancer, diabetes, and many others.

To figure out which health issues are the most important, we need to ask questions like:

- Which health problems affect the most people around the world?
- Which health issues cause the most suffering and death?
- Which health issues are the most preventable or treatable?
- Which health issues have the most impact on people's daily lives or the economy of their country?

Once we have these answers, we can start deciding which health issues to focus on first, and how to tackle them. It's like putting the most important toys on top of the pile so we can play with them first.

For example, if we find out that many people around the world are affected by a disease like tuberculosis, and that it causes a lot of pain and death, we might decide to focus on that when setting our global health priorities. We might decide to invest in research for finding new treatments, or make sure that people can easily access existing treatments.

Overall, priority-setting in global health is about deciding where we want to focus our attention and resources to make the biggest impact on people's health and wellbeing around the world.