The International Conference on Primary Health Care, meeting in Alma-Ata this twelfth day of September in the year Nineteen hundred and seventy-eight, expressing the need for urgent action by all governments, all health and development workers, and the world community to protect and promote the health of all the people of the world, hereby makes the following Declaration.
Understanding regional variation in patient satisfaction about healthcare systems (PHCs) on the quality of services provided is instrumental to improving quality and developing a patient-centered healthcare system by making it more responsive especially to the cultural aspects of health demands of a population. Reaching to the innovative National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) in Ghana, surpassing several reforms in healthcare financing has been a milestone. However little research has been conducted concerning patient satisfaction in resource-poor settings like in Ghana. This study was therefore dedicated to examining the variation in satisfaction across rural and urban women in Ghana.
Among the many drivers of health inequities, this article focuses on important, yet insufficiently understood, international-level determinants: economic globalization and the organizations that spread market-oriented policies to the developing world. One such organization is the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which provides financial assistance to countries in economic trouble in exchange for policy reforms. Through its ‘structural adjustment programs,’ countries around the world have liberalized and deregulated their economies. We examine how policy reforms prescribed in structural adjustment programs explain variation in health equity between nations—approximated by health system access and neonatal mortality. Our empirical analysis uses an original dataset of IMF-mandated policy reforms for a panel of up to 137 developing countries between 1980 and 2014. We employ regression analysis to evaluate the relationship between these reforms and health equity, taking into account the non-random selection and design of IMF programs. We find that structural adjustment reforms lower health ...
Brazil is a populous high/middle-income country, characterized by deep economic and social inequalities. Like most other Latin American nations, Brazil constructed a health system that included, on the one hand, public health programs and, on the other, social insurance healthcare for those working in the formal sector. This study analyzes the political struggles surrounding the implementation of a universal health system from the mid-1980s to the present, and their effects on selected health indicators, focusing on the relevant international and national contexts, political agendas, government orientations and actors.
The global public health community will be meeting at a critical time for our planet. Global temperatures lie far beyond historical records and there are real fears that we are reaching a tipping point. Threats to food and water supply, poverty and inequalities are leading to mass migration and conflict.
The theme of the World Congress, Public Health for the Future of Humanity: Analysis, Advocacy, and Action, reflects the commitment that the global public health community must make visible the threats to health, and must challenge and hold to account those with the power to make a difference.
Read more about the plenary programme of the World Congress on Public Health here.
Over the past decade there has been a growing realisation of the need to reform health and care systems in Australia to better coordinate care, improve quality and promote value.
For example, recent reports such as the 2017 Productivity Commission’s Shifting the Dial and the 2018 CSIRO report Future of Health criticised the existing disease-based, episodic, medicallydominated and institutionally- led characteristics of the Australian health system as being unable to respond effectively to the new challenges of age-related chronic illnesses and the very high percentage of Australians living in ill-health.
A more person-centred and integrated approach was required, including a shift in funding away from rewarding volume to incentivising value, empowering consumers, addressing health inequality, unlocking the value of digital health, and building integrated care ...
The pandemic caused by Covid 19 affects all types of countries and societies without distinction. However, within the com link, the unit shows brutal inequality in its "attack."The impact of COVID-19 has thrown into sharp relief the problems that fragmented health and care systems face in adapting to crises that require an urgent and collaborative response. The disproportionate impact of the pandemic – for example on ethnic minority and indigenous populations; on older people living in residential aged care facilities; on those living in rural and remote communities; on the poorest; and on people with the most complex health and care needs – says much about our continued inability to coordinate care and support our vulnerable communities, and so expose them to disproportionate risk.
This editorial does not propose 3 action challenges:
Challenge 1: Responses to COVID-19 have largely NOT been integrated, leading to adverse outcome
Challenge 2: Responses continue to ...