In Ethiopia, modern contraceptive prevalence among currently married women nearly tripled over the last decade, but the method mix remains skewed toward short-acting methods. Since 2011, the Integrated Family Health Program (IFHP+), jointly implemented by Pathfinder International and John Snow Inc., has supported the Federal Ministry of Health to introduce intrauterine devices (IUDs) in more th...

Objective Improve distribution of etiological treatment of Chagas disease by identifying barriers to the decentralization of treatment to the first level of care in Argentina. Methods A qualitative, exploratory, and descriptive study was conducted using semi-structured interviews of key actors belonging to the National Chagas Program and members of health teams at the first level of care, for...

This article discusses how pharmaceutical innovation achieves remarkable improvements in human health but a significant portion of the U.S. population cannot afford prescription drugs. The author examines ways that patent protection, generics, supply chain complexity, and the cost of innovation and promotion affect access and affordability. The author then looks at the influences of marketing s...

BackgroundEffective communication of anticipatory care planning (ACP) discussions between patients and general practitioners across different healthcare settings is vital. In Scotland, the Key Information Summary (KIS) is a new piece of software that allows clinical data for selected patients to be shared electronically across the wider National Health Service from the primary care record. This...

IF TREATING PATIENTS ATOP THE ROOF of the world in the Himalayan mountains, a hospital in war-torn Afghanistan, or a refugee camp in Sudan’s Darfur region sounds intriguing, physicians can do more than dream about such scenarios—they can volunteer with organizations that will allow them to mix altruism with adventure. But physicians willing to donate their skills and some time do not always hav...

INTRODUCTION Equitable health financing remains a key health policy objective worldwide. In low and middle-income countries (LMICs), there is evidence that many people are unable to access the health services they need due to financial and other barriers. There are growing calls for fairer health financing systems that will protect people from catastrophic and impoverishing health payments in t...

[Johanna Gribble]: Technological advances in recent years have resulted in a dramatic increase in the possibilities offered by teleaudiology, the ability to deliver audiology services via telecommunications technologies. These advances could improve access for a range of services including diagnostic audiology and remote hearing aid fittings, downloadable hearing aid applications, or even real-...

The use of cell phone text messaging to improve access to continuing healthcare education in under-resourced settings is not well documented. We aimed to assess whether this method of education is acceptable to South African midwives in both the public and private sectors. Essential healthcare lessons from the Maternal Care book of the Perinatal Education Programme (PEP) were delivered via text...

BACKGROUND Policies that improve access to healthy, affordable foods may improve population health and reduce health disparities. In the United States most food access policy research focuses on urban communities even though residents of rural communities face disproportionately higher risk for nutrition-related chronic diseases compared to residents of urban communities. The purpose of this st...

Replication of data items among different nodes of a wireless infrastructureless network may be an efficient technique to increase data availability and improve access latency. This paper proposes a novel algorithm to distribute data items among nodes in these networks. The goal of the algorithm is to deploy the replicas of the data items in a way such that they are sufficiently distant from ea...