While there is a growing literature on building performance measurement systems for health equities, this literature for the most part has not dealt with the challenges of coordinating the various parts of the system, the heterogeneous nature of such systems, or how evaluations and measurement can themselves improve performance. This paper describes the initial steps taken to build a performanc...

INTRODUCTION The Papua New Guinea Department of Health monitors the performance of the health system using a computerised national health information system. This article draws on the recent evaluation of a national-wide donor-project community development initiative to highlight the problems of the lack of and disaggregated village health data. This data could be used to monitor health status,...

BACKGROUND There is abundant evidence of the affordable, life-saving interventions effective at the local primary health care level in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). However, the understanding of how to deliver those interventions in diverse settings is limited. Primary healthcare services implementation research is needed to elucidate the contextual factors that can influence the ou...

This work aims to contribute to the discussion about the possibility of applying health economic evaluations at local level government healthcare system, and consequently use the results of this study into decision making. In order to subside this reflexion, it was analyzed the SAMU/192 Program costs evaluation in the city of Belo Horizonte, as well as data concerning effectiveness of the progr...

recent proposals for re-defining the roles africa’s health workforce are a continuation of the discussions that have been held since colonial times. the proposals have centred on basing the continent’s healthcare delivery on non-physician clinicians (npcs) who can be quickly trained and widely distributed to treat majority of the common diseases. whilst seemingly logical, the success of these p...

This paper is an analysis of the social interaction between drug sellers, their clients and local health care workers within a medical trial that introduced rapid diagnostic tests for malaria into private sector drug shops in Mukono District, Uganda. It locates the introduction of a new technology to test blood and a system of referral within the context of local concerns about the choice and e...

The importance of establishing and sustaining academic-public health practice linkages has been a point of emphasis in the Institute of Medicine reports on public health in 1988 and in 2003. One likely barrier to fostering such linkages is the absence of a clear framework that matches academic requirements to practice realities. This article describes how an academic-public health practice coll...