Total: 904

Policy brief: How can the settings used to provide care to older people be balanced?

The optimal balance between institutional, home-based and community care for older adults requires an effective mix of organizational, funding and delivery mechanisms for target populations. This spans health and social care, and the coordination of care must respect older people’s care preferences and...

Policy brief: when do vertical (stand-alone) programmes have a place in health systems?

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...

The Programme for Advancement through Health and Education (PATH)

PATH is a nation-wide programme providing two types of grants. The first is a health grant, which is contingent on certain members of the household attending public health clinics at regularly scheduled intervals. The second is the education grant, which is contingent on children aged 6-17 attending scho...

Staffing for safety: a synthesis of the evidence on nurse staffing and patient safety

Nurse staffing makes a critical difference to patients. Research reveals a close link between inappropriate nurse staffing levels and higher rates of unwanted outcomes for patients. This report highlights evidence-informed recommendations for improvements in patient outcomes through advancements in nurse...

HIV and infant feeding: summary of findings from the good start study

The Good Start Study was a prospective cohort study of 665 HIV positive women who attended routine PMTCT services. The women and infants were followed for 36 weeks after birth with data collection during home visits every 2 weeks until 12 weeks and then monthly until 9 months. At each scheduled visit inf...

Health care outside hospital: accessing generalist and specialist care in 8 countries

The delivery of health care is changing. While the acute hospital will always play a key role in the provision of health care, reflecting its important role in training and research, as well as its capacity to manage complex and severe disorders, in many countries there is an increasing interest in the s...

Evidence from systematic reviews to inform decision making regarding financing mechanisms that improve access to health services for poor people

Without evidence-informed action, health-related Millennium Development Goals as well as those of individual nations are unlikely to be achieved. Health policies are influenced by a variety of factors – values and beliefs, stakeholder power, institutional constraints, and donor funding flows, among oth...

What effects do mobile phones have on people’s health?

During recent years, the use of mobile phones has increased substantially and has been paralleled by a growing concern about the effects on health attributed to exposure to the electromagnetic fields produced by them and their base stations. Demonstrating that radiation causes adverse effects on health w...

What is known about the effectiveness of economic instruments to reduce consumption of foods high in saturated fats and other energy-dense foods for preventing and treating obesity?

Overweight and obesity are increasingly prevalent in Europe. In the European Region, the growing prevalence of overweight – a body mass index (BMI) over 25 kg/m2 – ranges from about 25% to 75% of the adult population. Up to a third of the adult population, about 130 million people, are obese – with...