health reforms that emphasize public health and improvements in primary care can be cost-effective measures to achieve health improvements, especially in developing countries that face severe resource constraints. in their paper “shanghai rising: health improvements as measured by avoidable mortality since 2000,” gusmano et al suggest that shanghai’s health policy-makers have been successful in...

the focus on public policy and health equity is discussed in reference to the current global health policy discussion on universal health coverage (uhc). this initiative has strong commitment from the leadership of the international organizations involved, but a lack of policy clarity outside of the health financing component may limit the initiative’s impact on health inequity. in order to add...

the world health organization’s (who’s) world health report 2010, “health systems financing, the path to universal coverage,” promoted universal health coverage (uhc) as an aspirational objective for country health systems. yet, in addition to the dimensions of services and coverage, distribution of coverage in the population, and financial risk protection highlighted by the report, the conside...

OBJECTIVE to investigate the knowledge of managers and health professionals, social workers and education professionals regarding the principal barriers to universal health coverage and universal access to health on the part of the extremely poor population; and to point to the contributions made by nursing for the promotion of this right. METHOD a qualitative study whose reference was, for e...

Protection from care–related catastrophic expenditures through equitable access to affordable health services is the hallmark of a pro–poor health policy [1]. Over the past two decades, the Government of Ethiopia has implemented policies with a clear intent of reducing poverty and improving the daily lives of its citizens, especially the poor [2]. Guided by these cross cutting pro– poor governm...

this article discusses what ethicists have called “unacceptable trade-offs” in health policy choices related to universal health coverage (uhc). since the fiscal space is constrained, trade-offs need to be made. but some trade-offs are unacceptable on the path to universal coverage. unacceptable choices include, among other examples from low-income countries, to expand coverage for services wit...

binagwaho and colleagues’ perspective piece provided a timely reflection on the experience of rwanda in achieving the millennium development goals (mdgs) and a proposal of 5 principles to carry forward in post-2015 health development. this commentary echoes their viewpoints and offers three lessons for health policy reforms consistent with these principles beyond 2015. specifically, we argue th...