PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Rebecca Katz
AU  - Ellie Graeden
AU  - Stephanie Eaneff
AU  - Justin Kerr
TI  - Strengthening health security: an intuitive and user-friendly tool to estimate country-level costs
AID  - 10.1136/bmjgh-2018-000864
DP  - 2018 Aug 01
TA  - BMJ Global Health
PG  - e000864
VI  - 3
IP  - 4
4099  - http://gh.bmj.com/content/3/4/e000864.short
4100  - http://gh.bmj.com/content/3/4/e000864.full
AB  - Member States of the WHO working to build capacity under the International Health Regulations (IHR) are advised to develop prioritised, costed plans to implement improvements based on the results of voluntary external assessments. Defining the costs associated with capacity building under the IHR, however, has challenged nations, funders and supporting organisations. Most current efforts to develop costed national action plans involve long-term engagements that may take weeks or months to complete. While these efforts have value in and of themselves, there is an urgent need for a rapid-use tool to provide cost estimates regardless of the level of expertise of the personnel assigned to the task. In this paper, we describe a tool that can—in a matter of hours—provide country-level cost estimates for capacity building under the IHR. This paper also describes how the tool can be used in countries, as well as the challenges inherent in any costing process.