Viewing primary care as merely one of the many niches in individual patient care fosters a narrow perspective that neither accounts for the full value of primary care nor offers proper guidance for reforming it. Instead, a systems view better articulates primary care's essential role in increasing the effectiveness and efficiency of other health care services. Primary care improves health care ...

The cost of health insurance has been the primary concern of small business owners for several decades. State small group health insurance reforms, implemented in the 1990s, aimed to control the variability of health insurance premiums and to improve access to health insurance. Small group reforms only affected firms within a specific size range, and the definition of the upper size threshold f...

Eurohealth is a quarterly publication that provides a forum for researchers, experts and policymakers to express their views on health policy issues and so contribute to a constructive debate on health policy in Europe. The views expressed in Eurohealth are those of the authors alone and not necessarily those of LSE Health, Merck & Co or the European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies. ...

Editorials 715 A forthcoming report by the World Health Organization (WHO) on evidence for policy is already fuelling passionate debate, especially among scientists. Opinions are divided: some scientists believe strongly in the systematic assessment of evidence on the effectiveness of health system interventions and reforms; 1 others are skeptical. 2,3 This is not just another academic debate. ...

The Greek mental health system has been undergoing radical reforms for over the past twenty years. In congruence with trends and practices in other European countries, Greek mental health reforms were designed to develop a community-based mental health service system. The implementation of an extensive transformation became possible through the "Psychargos" program, a national strategic and ope...

Abstract This paper examines the effects of high school curriculum reforms on infant health by exploiting sharp and staggered changes across states in core course requirements for graduation. Our results suggest that significantly reduced incidence low birth weight prematurity black mothers. For white mothers, estimated are small generally insignificant. We also explore mechanisms observed prov...

The current literature on the politics of social policy has two major shortcomings: health care reforms are undertheoretized and research on Anglophone Africa tends to neglect health reforms. To tackle this, a case study on Kenya presents (failed) re-forms such as universal or categorical free health care or the introduction of health insurance and the expansion of its coverage. The case study ...