George Rosen's "From Medical Police to Social Medicine" is a collection of essays he wrote during the past thirty years, ranging, as the title states, from medical police to social medicine. The underlying thesis of many of the essays is that the theories, the policies, and the practices of public health can be understood fully only against the backdrop of the social, economic, and political ch...

BACKGROUND Little is known about the interventions required to build the capacity of mental health policy-makers and planners in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). We conducted a systematic review with the primary aim of identifying and synthesizing the evidence base for building the capacity of policy-makers and planners to strengthen mental health systems in LMICs. METHODS We searche...

BACKGROUND In Europe, progress in the development of health policies that address the needs of migrants and ethnic minorities has been slow. This is partly due to the absence of a strategic commitment by the health authorities. The Ministry of Public Health commissioned the ETHEALTH (EThnicity &HEALTH) group to formulate relevant recommendations to the public authorities with a view to reducing...

Among the many reasons that may limit the adoption of promising reform ideas, policy capacity is the least recognized. The concept itself is not widely understood. Although policy capacity is concerned with the gathering of information and the formulation of options for public action in the initial phases of policy consultation and development, it also touches on all stages of the policy proces...

To advance understanding of key health policy issues and to advocate, in concert with others as appropriate, health policy that will improve health and the manner in which health care and financing systems serve Americans. Goals The Institute's Goals are to: • Identify significant long-term health policy issues; • Organize internal and external resources to analyze such policies; • Improve unde...

A government-sponsored study of childhood cancer in the proximity of German nuclear power plants (German acronym KiKK) found that children < 5 years living < 5 km from plant exhaust stacks had twice the risk for contracting leukemia as those residing > 5 km. The researchers concluded that since "this result was not to be expected under current radiation-epidemiological knowledge" and confounder...

structure to concepts in biology to the social make-up of the German professoriate to the academic policy of the State. This is material of undoubted importance, not least in relation to Paul Forman's views on German physics, and one hopes to see it developed and refined in future. There are two papers of particular relevance to medical historians: Brian Harrison's provocative and elegantly wri...

After a short introduction on technological change and national and regional innovation systems, this paper presents a description of the German and Spanish models of technology policy. In comparing to the Spanish model the German technology policy is a diversified and well elaborated model moving towards a, more or less integrated framework of national and regional policy instruments. On the o...

This special issue of the Journal is devoted to understanding the many roads that lead toward achieving health equity. The eleven articles in the issue portray an America that is struggling with the clash between its historical ideal of pursuing equality for all and its ambivalence toward achieving equity in all social domains, especially health. Organized in five sections, the issue contains a...