The Tanzania Essential Health Interventions Project (TEHIP) is a research and development partnership between Tanzania's Ministry of Health and Canada's International Development Research Centre (IDRC). TEHIP was established to test innovations in planning, priority setting, and resource allocation at the district level, in the context of the reform and decentralization of Tanzania's health care system. The project's goal is to determine the feasibility of an "evidence-based" approach to health planning -- an approach whereby decisions on how to allocate scarce health care resources are made based on information obtained locally rather than on the unproven assumptions of a central agency -- and measure its impact. TEHIP's basic premise, in other words, is that the health of a population can be improved, not only by spending more money, but by spending money more wisely, according to where the needs are greatest.

The Tanzania Essential Health Interventions Project (TEHIP) was inspired by the World Bank's World Development Report 1993 Investing in Health (WDR '93). This was the first World Development Report to focus on the challenges facing health care systems around the world. WDR '93 highlighted the need for global health reform, citing systemic problems that hinder the delivery of services and reducing death and illness. These include a huge imbalance in health care spending (more resources go toward expensive but less effective interventions such as tertiary care and CAT scans rather than simpler interventions like primary care); the inefficient use of available resources; rising health care costs; and inequitable access to health services. Investing in Health also noted that these problems are often compounded in low income economies by highly centralized decision making, wide fluctuations in health budgets, and low motivation of health care workers.

Given the scarcity of available health resources, especially in low-income countries, WDR '93 proposed that health planning and priority setting should be based on the principles of "burden of disease" and "cost-effective analysis" — i.e., "getting the best value for money." It also asserted that improving and maintaining the health of the population is an integral and vital part of any country's social and economic development plan and policies. The report went on to predict that the provision of cost-effective packages of essential interventions "reaching 80% of the population could result in a 32% reduction in the burden of disease in low-income countries and 15% in middle-income countries."