How Thailand's greater convergence created sustainable funding for emerging health priorities caused by globalization

BACKGROUND Global health is shifting gradually from a limited focus on individual communicable disease goals to the formulation of broader sustainable health development goals. A major impediment to this shift is that most low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) have not established adequate sustainable funding for health promotion and health infrastructure. OBJECTIVE In this article, we analyze how Thailand, a middle-income country, created a mechanism for sustainable funding for health. DESIGN We analyzed the progression of tobacco control and health promotion policies over the past three decades within the wider political-economic and sociocultural context. We constructed a parallel longitudinal analysis of statistical data on one emerging priority - road accidents - to determine whether policy shifts resulted in reduced injuries, hospitalizations and deaths. RESULTS In Thailand, the convergence of priorities among national interest groups for sustainable health development created an opportunity to use domestic tax policy and to create a semi-autonomous foundation (ThaiHealth) to address a range of pressing health priorities, including programs that substantially reduced road accidents. CONCLUSIONS Thailand's strategic process to develop a domestic mechanism for sustainable funding for health may provide LMICs with a roadmap to address emerging health priorities, especially those caused by modernization and globalization.