Governing multisectoral action for health in low- and middle-income countries

Monitoring Sustainable Development Goals 3: Assessing the Readiness of Low- and Middle-Income Countries

Background The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) availed opportunities for scaling up service coverage but called for stringent monitoring and evaluation (M&E;) focusing mainly on MDG related programs. The Sustainable Development Goals 3 (SDGs) and the universal health coverage (UHC) agenda present a broader scope and require more ...

Achieving Universal Health Coverage by Focusing on Primary Care in Japan: Lessons for Low- and Middle-Income Countries

When the Japanese government adopted Western medicine in the late nineteenth century, it left intact the infrastructure of primary care by giving licenses to the existing practitioners and by initially setting the hurdle for entry into medical school low. Public financing of hospitals was kept minimal so that almost all of their revenue came from patient charges. When social health insurance (S...

Community Health Worker Programs to Improve Healthcare Access and Equity: Are They Only Relevant to Low- and Middle-Income Countries?

Background Community Health Workers (CHWs) are proven to be highly effective in low- and middle-income countries with many examples of successful large-scale programs. There is growing interest in deploying CHW programs in high-income countries to address inequity in healthcare access and outcomes amongst population groups facing disadvantage. This study is the first that examines the scope and...

Are We Asking All the Right Questions About Quality of Care in Low- and Middle-Income Countries?

Political Impetus: Towards a Successful Agenda-Setting for Inclusive Health Policies in Low- and Middle-Income Countries; Comment on “Shaping the Health Policy Agenda: The Case of Safe Motherhood Policy in Vietnam”

Agenda-setting is a crucial step for inclusive health policies in the low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Enlightened by Ha et al manuscript, this commentary paper argues that ‘political impetus’ is the key to the successful agenda-setting of health policies in LMICs, though other determinants may also play the role during the process. This Vietnamese case study presents a good example fo...