The European Strategy for Health for All by the Year 2000 urged member states to develop a national health policy. In the developmental process of HFA2000 the notion of 'healthy public policy' was conceived in the framework of the WHO Health Promotion Programme. Such healthy public policy--simply referred to as 'health policy' in this article--would take health consequences in all governmental ...

Serbia, as many countries in Eastern Europe, is in the process of reforming its health system in an effort to improve the efficiency and efficacy of health services and to achieve equal distribution of health resources. Representatives of Ministry of Health (MOH), Health Insurance Fund (HIF), and Institute of Public Health (IPH) articulated an overall health vision for the health sector in Serb...

Ageing is a natural phenomenon and an inevitable process. Population ageing is pervasive since it is creating humanitarian, social and economic problems in many countries of the world including Nepal. Nepalese society is in a phase of modernization. There is modification in the cultural norms and traditional family support systems for elderly in Nepal which have placed substantial strain in car...

The extent to which mental health consumers encounter stigma in their daily lives is a matter of substantial importance for their recovery and quality of life. This article summarizes the results of a nationwide survey of 1,301 mental health consumers concerning their experience of stigma and discrimination. Survey results and followup interviews with 100 respondents revealed experience of stig...

Background: According to the World Health Organization, one in four people experience a psychiatric disorder throughout his/her life. For centuries, psychiatric patients have been sent to psychiatric hospitals that often stigmatized and located out of the community. Moreover, these patients are stigmatized by the hospital staff because they are not aware of patients’ experience...

Rochester, New York, has been cited repeatedly for having achieved one of the most cost-effective and efficient health care systems in the country. The determinants of the success of this system include a long history of comprehensive health planning; innovative hospital reimbursement programs; community-rated health insurance; and high levels of mutual cooperation among business, insurers, hos...

The aim of this paper is to give a short description of the most important developments of mental health services in Finland during the 1990s, examine their influences on the organisation and provision of services, and describe shortly some national efforts to handle the new situation. The Finnish mental health service system experienced profound changes in the beginning of the 1990s. These inc...

status of blood­collecting organi­ zations — policies that the WHO endorses and that were stressed again in a 2011 World Health As­ sembly resolution. These principles can also be established within a country through legislation or policy and can be achieved with­ in a biologics manufacturing en­ vironment. Additional concerns are that treating blood as a medication might increase costs and int...