‘Making the case’ for increasing domestic investment in priority health services

This learning brief summarises key lessons from Options’ experience of working with advocacy and health financing teams across different programmes in sub-Saharan Africa to ‘make the case’ for increased domestic funding for priority health services, such as family planning and sexual and reproductive health and rights (FP/SRHR) and mental health services. We use the term ‘investment case’ to refer to a broad range of advocacy activities, from presenting primary data analysis of the return on investment (i.e. in terms of lives and money saved) to the synthesis and presentation of broader rationales for investment spanning not only economic gains but those related to better population health and wellbeing and the achievement of national commitments and fulfilment of rights.