A greater focus on the role of health systems in health, development, and economic growth has led health policy research and analysis, domestic and global, to scrutinize health financing, insurance, and financial protection. Two World Health Reports (2000 and 2010) [1,2] have called for evaluating health system performance in terms of health financing, and the World Health Organization’s (WHO) ...

this commentary on the editorial ‘the politics and analytics of health policy’ by professor calum paton focuses on two issues. first, it points to the unclear links between ideas, ideology, values, and discourse and policy, and warns that discourse is often a poor guide to enacted policy. second, it suggests that realism, particularly ‘programme theory’ are useful tools for health policy analys...

in his perspective “navigating between stealth advocacy and unconscious dogmatism: the challenge of researching the norms, politics and power of global health,” ooms argues that actions taken in the field of global health are dependent not only on available resources, but on the normative premise that guides how these resources are spent. this comment sets out how the application of a predomina...

the 21st century is an era of great challenge for humankind; we are combating terrorism, climate change, poverty, human rights issues and last but not least non-communicable diseases (ncds). the burden of the latter has become so large that it is being recognized by world leaders globally as an area that it is in need of much greater attention. in light of this concern, the world health organiz...

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BACKGROUND Major variations in medical practice have been documented internationally. Variations raise questions about the quality, equity, and efficiency of resource allocation and use, and have important implications for health care and health policy. OBJECTIVE To perform a systematic review of the peer-reviewed literature on medical practice variations in OECD countries. METHODS We searc...

Multisectoral actions for health, defined as actions undertaken by non-health sectors to protect the health of the population, are essential in the context of inter-linkages between three dimensions of sustainable development: economic, social, and environmental. These multisectoral actions can address the social and economic factors that influence the health of a population at the local, natio...

The fourth Global Forum on Human Resources (HRH) for Health was held in Ireland November 2017. Its Dublin declaration mentions that strategic investments in the health workforce could contribute to sustainable and inclusive growth and are an imperative to shared prosperity. What is remarkable about the investment frame for health workforce development is that there is little debate about the ty...

1 McMaster Health Forum, Centre for Health Economics and Policy Analysis, Department of Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, and Department of Political Science, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, 2 Norwegian Knowledge Centre for the Health Services, Oslo, Norway, 3 Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute, Basel, Switzerland, 4 Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Mal...