BACKGROUND Typologies traditionally used for international comparisons of health systems often conflate many system characteristics. To capture policy changes over time and by service in health systems regulation of public and private insurance, we propose a database containing explicit, standardized indicators of policy instruments. METHODS The Health Insurance Access Database (HIAD) will co...

Addressing the increasingly globalised determinants of many important problems affecting human health is a complex task requiring collective action. We suggest that part of the solution to addressing intractable global health issues indeed lies with the role of new legal instruments in the form of globally binding treaties, as described in the recent article of Nikogosian and Kickbusch. However...

BACKGROUND The International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) should be widely used in research and clinical practice, but there are few studies that do so with the evaluation instruments used in physical therapy. OBJECTIVE To compare instruments that evaluate sleep, cognition and function in stroke patients according to the ICF. METHODS Twelve patients (6 women) w...

PURPOSE A review of existing measurement instruments was conducted to examine their suitability to measure disability prevalence and assess quality of life, protection of disability rights and community participation by people with disabilities, specifically within the context of development programs in low and middle-income countries. METHODS From a search of PubMed and the grey literature, ...

BACKGROUND Older people are commonly prescribed complex multi-drug regimens while also experiencing declines in the cognitive and physical abilities required for medication management, leading to increased risk of medication errors and need for assisted living. The purpose of this study was to review published instruments designed to assess patients' capacity to self-administer medications. M...

OBJECTIVE To identify instruments or components of instruments that aim to measure aspects of a caring culture-shared beliefs, norms and values that direct professionals and managers to act caring in hospitals, and to evaluate their psychometric properties. DESIGN Systematic review. DATA SOURCES PubMed, CINAHL, EMBASE, PsychInfo, Web of Science and the International bibliography of the Soci...

We review some recent theoretical progress in the understanding of weak radiative B meson decay, and discuss the implications of present and improved measurements of b → sγ for supersymmetric models. Talk presented at Beauty ’97, Fifth International Workshop on B-Physics at Hadron Machines, Los Angeles, CA, October 13-17, 1997. To be published in Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Resea...

PURPOSE This paper focuses on the construct validity of instruments measuring impairments in body structures and function in rheumatic disorders. The objective is: 1) to make an inventory of constructs, based on the domains of the International Classification of Functioning, Disabilities and Health problems (ICF), against which instruments measuring impairments in body structures and function w...