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...

concerns regarding the trans-pacific partnership (tpp) have raised awareness about the negative public health impacts of trade and investment agreements. in the past decade, we have learned much about the implications of trade agreements for public health: reduced equity in access to health services; increased flows of unhealthy commodities; limits on access to medicines; and constrained policy...

background in many parts of the world, ongoing deficiencies in health systems compromise the delivery of health interventions. the world health organization (who) identified four functions that health systems need to perform to achieve their goals: efforts to strengthen health systems focus on the way these functions are carried out. while a number of studies on health systems functions have be...

We examine the scope of inquiry into the measurement and assessment of the state public health policy environment. We argue that there are gains to be made by looking systematically at policies both within and across health domains. We draw from the public health and public policy literature to develop the concepts of interdomain and intradomain policy comprehensiveness and illustrate how these...

This article addresses policymaking related to Emergency Care Units (ECU) in the State of Rio de Janeiro between 2007 and 2013, duly identifying the relationships between the various levels of government in this process. It prioritized the context of policy formulation, the factors that motivated the inclusion and maintenance of ECUs on the state agenda and the process of how the policy was imp...

In France, the last decade has been marked by the institutionalisation of evaluation as part of the landscape of public policies. This movement started with science and technology, which, compared to other public policies, went through a specific institutionalisation process. In this chapter I shall present the main transformations and draw some preliminary conclusions on the specific choice ma...

Understanding the policy cycle, as well as scrutinizing the text of hidden and obvious policies and rules, requires a model of discourse analysis based on which discursive ap-proaches of policy makers are understood and estimated. However, when it comes to presenting a policy model, we have to use the views of policy theorists to see how a problem as a "public goods" can be found in the policy ...

Carey and Friel suggest that we turn to knowledge developed in the field of public administration, especially new public governance, to better understand the process of implementing health in all policies (HiAP). In this commentary, I claim that theories from the policy studies bring a broader view of the policy process, complementary to that of new public governance. Drawing on the policy stud...