There is a shortage and maldistribution of medically trained health professionals. These are important reasons why cost-effective MCH services are not available to over half the population of Uganda and progress towards the Millennium Development Goals for MCH is slow. Optimising the roles of less specia...
Conditional Cash Transfer (CCTs) programmes provide cash to poor households who meet certain health and education conditions such as regular school attendance and health check-ups for children at the clinic. This model of intervention is spreading rapidly throughout the developing world. Over 17 countrie...
The choice of a strategy to assess the future health workforce (HW) is value-based and depends on what health outcomes and service objectives policy-makers have set.Various models, approaches and toolkits have been proposed and tried over the years by international agencies, as well as by individual coun...
A growing evidence base suggests that health insurance in poor areas can improve people?s access to health care. But the poorest in these areas do not seem to benefit much. Health insurance programs, generally, have not helped in reaching out to the poorest or improving their health care use. And whether...
All countries in Europe are experiencing an ageing of their populations, a trend
that is projected to continue until at least the middle of the twenty-first century.
This process is often regarded as a major cause of upward pressure on health
care costs. However, analyses of health care expenditure show ...
Gender differences in health and in how well health systems and health care
services meet the needs of women and men are well known: in Europe, there
are variations in terms of life expectancy, the risk of mortality and morbidity,
health behaviours and in the use of health care services. There is also in...
The terms vertical and integrated are widely used in health service delivery, but
each describes a range of phenomena. In practice, the dichotomy between
them is not rigid, and the extent of verticality or integration varies between
programmes – including (1) a vertically funded, managed, delivered and...
Policy issues• Health technology assessment (HTA) is an important tool for informing effective regulation of the diffusion and use of health technologies.• The key policy issues surrounding the use of HTA fall into three areas: (a) the bodies, decision-makers and other stakeholders involved, (b) the ...
Key messagesPolicy issue and associated policy challenges• Population health is influenced by a variety of factors, many of whichrequire action outside the health system.• The health and socioeconomic costs of the key contributors to poor healthin Europe are substantial. Many of these health problems...
Skill-mix initiatives focus on changing professional roles - directly and indirectly.They change roles directly through extension of roles or skills, delegation, andthe introduction of a new type of worker; they change them indirectly throughmodifications of the interface between services - that is, wher...
