Background Negotiations surrounding the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade and investment agreement have recently concluded. Although trade and investment agreements, part of a broader shift to global economic integration, have been argued to be vital to improved economic growth, health, and general welfare, these agreements have increasingly come under scrutiny for their direct and indirect...

Health policy has been termed a ‘chameleon concept’, referring to its ability to take on different forms of disciplinarity as well as different roles and functions. This paper extends Paton’s analysis by exploring the paradox of health policy as a field of academic inquiry—sitting across many of the boundaries of social science but also marginalised by them. It situates contemporary approaches ...

we are on the eve of a revolution in health policy that will forever change our way of thinking about health and healthcare. a few years from now, our vision of the organization and the administration of healthcare services will be transformed.   this is not a revolution born out of crisis, albeit the financial pressure on public and private funders of healthcare is clearly at play. it has not ...

Ensuring that health policies uphold core concepts of human rights and are inclusive of vulnerable groups are imperative aspects of providing equity in health care, and of realizing the United Nations’ call for Health for All. We outline the process of extensive consultation undertaken across countries and stakeholders culminating in the development of EquiFrame, in conjunction with its associa...

The paper presents a theoretical exercise regarding health care evaluation in an effort to define several concepts. The multi-dimensional aspects of quality in health are emphasized in addition to the differences between quality evaluation and qualitative evaluation. The implications of not distinguishing between these two concepts are also discussed. Health care is analyzed as a material expre...