What is Costing?

Estimating the costs of nutrition-sensitive health interventions is important to policymakers and program implementers to understand the costs of scaling up multisectoral approaches. Costs can, for example, be used to assess if resources are being used efficiently or whether there is scope to reallocate them in a way that would lead to improvements in maternal and child nutrition and health outcomes.

The 20-minute video below is an excellent introduction to costing. The talk was given by Dr. James Kahn, MD, MPH from the Global Brain Health Institute on December 12, 2016.

The Global Health Cost Consortium (GHCC) Reference Case and Unit Cost Study Repository features a helpful presentation titled, "Essential Component of Health Priority Setting: Best Practices in Understanding and Interpreting Cost Data," which was part of the World Bank 2018 Skills Building Program: Big data, artificial intelligence, and decision science in health and nutrition. Download the self-guided slide deck here.

For more information on costing resources, visit the Resources page.