Health Disparities in Latin America and the Caribbean: the Role of Social and Economic Determinants
Author | : Pan American Health Organization. Health and Human Development |
Publisher | : |
Total Pages | : 48 |
Release | : 1999 |
Genre | : |
ISBN | : |
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Author | : Pan American Health Organization. Health and Human Development |
Publisher | : |
Total Pages | : 48 |
Release | : 1999 |
Genre | : |
ISBN | : |
Author | : Tania Dmytraczenko |
Publisher | : World Bank Publications |
Total Pages | : 247 |
Release | : 2015-06-30 |
Genre | : Medical |
ISBN | : 1464804559 |
Over the past three decades, many countries of Latin America and the Caribbean have recognized health as a human right. Since the early 2000s, 46 million more people in the countries studied are covered by health programs with explicit guarantees of affordable care. Reforms have been accompanied by a rise in public spending for health, financed largely from general revenues that prioritized or explicitly target the population without capacity to pay. Political commitment has generally translated into larger budgets as well as passage of legislation that ring-fenced funding for health. Most countries have prioritized cost-effective primary care and adopted purchasing methods that incentivize efficiency and accountability for results, and that give stewards of the health sector greater leverage to steer providers to deliver on public health priorities. Evidence from the analysis of 54 household surveys corroborates that investments in extending coverage are yielding results. Though the poor still have worse health outcomes than the rich, disparities have narrowed considerably - particularly in the early stage of the life course. Countries have reached high levels of coverage and equity in utilization of maternal and child health services; coverage of noncommunicable disease interventions is not as high and service utilization is still skewed toward the better off. Catastrophic health expenditures have declined in most countries; the picture regarding equity, however, is mixed. While the rate of impoverishment owing to health-care expenditures is low and generally declining, 2-4 million people in the countries studied still fall below the poverty line after health spending. Efforts to systematically monitor quality of care in the region are still in their infancy. Nonetheless, a review of the literature reveals important shortcomings in quality of care, as well as substantial differences across subsystems. Improving quality of care and ensuring sustainability of investments in health remain an unfinished agenda.
Author | : |
Publisher | : UN |
Total Pages | : 52 |
Release | : 2010-12-13 |
Genre | : Health & Fitness |
ISBN | : 9789211217445 |
There are notorious health inequalities in Latin America and the Caribbean. A series of factors limit access to timely and quality medical care: scarcity of human resources, infrastructure, facilities and medicine, as well as low family incomes, physical and cultural distance between supply provided by the public sector and the population requiring care. Income levels, place of residence and ethnic origins are therefore variables that shape vulnerability and exclusion of millions of households throughout the region. This situation is accompanied by changes in health demand structure stemming from the fast speed of population aging and urban growth, especially in intermediate cities. On the other hand, increasing movement of people between countries, especially in border areas, poses the challenge of integrated strategies for epidemiological surveillance and healthcare. This situation is exacerbated by the rising cost of medical care, due -- among other reasons -- to the higher cost of health related technologies (medicine and equipment), and more commonplace chronic diseases because of the increasing number of older people. This scenario implies important challenges for the development of State policies and strategies that must include decisions regarding the incorporation of information and communication technologies (ICTs). The potential of these policies and strategies for reducing access limitations, improving efficiency in the health sector and in the quality of care and patient safety, are some of the elements that must be considered in order to decidedly face the difficulties and resistance that other sectors have already tackled. Major changes and increasing improvements for ICTs, as well as the breakneck development of bioengineering and technological convergence are changing the way we can work around the issue of health. The possible application of such technological innovation encompasses many, if not all activities related to health care, administration and education, offering opportunities to both increase coverage and improve the quality of care, as well as health system effectiveness and efficiency. The concept of electronic health (e-health) is used herein to encompass the multiple potential applications of ICTs in this field, regardless of whether they are aimed at health sector authorities, organizations providing care and health professionals, or used as customized systems for patients and citizens in general. This concept includes applications ranging from electronic medical records and various types of telemedicine to health portals and hospital management systems, among others. This basically refers to everything that uses ICTs in order to improve health actions in the sphere of prevention, diagnosis, treatment, monitoring and management. However, limited institutional progress has been made despite several electronic health initiatives being implemented throughout the region. Consequently, most of these projects have limited scope and are not properly integrated into health policies or national ICT strategies. This document starts by identifying and describing the several benefits expected as a result of incorporating ICTs in health and goes on to summarize present and future challenges for health policies, especially inasmuch as the most vulnerable populations are concerned. Thirdly, the document showcases global progress made in several applications, strategies implemented and difficulties faced in some developed and LAC countries. The document finishes with generic proposals for the formulation of policies and strategies to be considered and adapted by countries throughout the region.
Author | : Ronnie Shepard |
Publisher | : Rowman & Littlefield |
Total Pages | : 231 |
Release | : 2019-07-02 |
Genre | : Social Science |
ISBN | : 1498572855 |
Gender, Health, and Society in Contemporary Latin America and the Caribbean takes a multilayered approach to the contemporary peoples of Latin America, the Caribbean, and Latinx peoples in the greater diaspora. Central to this edited collection, and critical to its creative significance and contribution, is the conceptual unification of gendered health, the embodiment of identity, societal structures, and social inequality, and the ways in which gender, health, and society intersect daily. By emphasizing the complex ways in which gender and health intersect in Latin America, the contributors to this collection offer a more detailed look at how gender embodies health inequities in these populations and how societal woes impact and constrain gendered bodies in public spheres.
Author | : Richard Legé Harris |
Publisher | : Rowman & Littlefield |
Total Pages | : 364 |
Release | : 2008 |
Genre | : Business & Economics |
ISBN | : 9780742555242 |
Provides comparative analysis of political, economic, and social developments in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Author | : World Bank. Equity in Health in LAC Project |
Publisher | : |
Total Pages | : |
Release | : 1999* |
Genre | : Medical care |
ISBN | : |
Author | : María Eugenia Bonilla-Chacín |
Publisher | : World Bank Publications |
Total Pages | : 249 |
Release | : 2013-12-24 |
Genre | : Business & Economics |
ISBN | : 1464800170 |
This book examines the health and economic impact of noncommunicable diseases in Latin America and the Caribbean and the governance challenges in designing and implementating multisectoral interventions to prevent these conditions, including policies to improve diet, increase physical activity, and reduce tobacco use and alcohol abuse.
Author | : Mary McEniry |
Publisher | : |
Total Pages | : 37 |
Release | : 2013 |
Genre | : |
ISBN | : |
Unequal societies tend to have larger health inequalities. Conditions in low and middle income countries during the 1930s-1960s led to higher survivorship in early life due to public health interventions including medical technology but this may not have translated into parallel improvements in standard of living during childhood or throughout the life course. As a result, there may be sharper SES health disparities among these survivors of poor early life conditions. This paper examines this conjecture by matching the relative index of inequality (RII) based on education and household income with the prevalence of chronic conditions (heart disease and diabetes), functional difficulties, obesity, and poor self-reported health among older adults born during the first portion of this period using a recently compiled cross national data set of older adults from Latin America, the Caribbean, Asia, Africa, the US, England, and the Netherlands. The results in general show a positive association between the RII and the prevalence of adult health outcomes (chronic conditions, obesity, and functionality). In particular, the results for diabetes suggest the possibility of a steeper association between SES inequality in education and income and the prevalence of health outcomes among older adults in cohorts hypothesized to have a larger pool of survivors of poor early life conditions. More investigation is warranted although the conjecture regarding the long term consequences of early life conditions and later SES disparities in health among these older adults may not be totally off the mark.