The PRICELESS SA (Priority Cost Effective Lessons for Systems Strengthening South Africa ) initiative, is a country specific study originating from the DCP2 (www.dcp2.org) and is one response to providing relevant country specific data. As certain risk factors/diseases in South Africa are responsible for the highest burden of disease having an understanding of which effective interventions can be used to address some of these high burden conditions with scarce resources could have a considerable impact on population health. The aim of the initiative, launched in 2009 is to generate and support the development of evidence-based information and tools to help determine how best to use existing scarce resources so that health systems work more effectively and efficiently. Building expertise to perform this work is essential.