Improving Health in the Community

Improving Health in the Community
Author: Institute of Medicine
Publisher: National Academies Press
Total Pages: 497
Release: 1997-05-21
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 0309055342

How do communities protect and improve the health of their populations? Health care is part of the answer but so are environmental protections, social and educational services, adequate nutrition, and a host of other activities. With concern over funding constraints, making sure such activities are efficient and effective is becoming a high priority. Improving Health in the Community explains how population-based performance monitoring programs can help communities point their efforts in the right direction. Within a broad definition of community health, the committee addresses factors surrounding the implementation of performance monitoring and explores the "why" and "how to" of establishing mechanisms to monitor the performance of those who can influence community health. The book offers a policy framework, applies a multidimensional model of the determinants of health, and provides sets of prototype performance indicators for specific health issues. Improving Health in the Community presents an attainable vision of a process that can achieve community-wide health benefits.

Resource Allocation & Health Needs

Resource Allocation & Health Needs
Author: Estelle A Gilman
Publisher:
Total Pages: 142
Release: 1994-01-01
Genre: Health planning
ISBN: 9780117017740

Can policies for allocating resources in the Health Service be equitable and include assessment of the health needs of different populations? This is a topic on which there is currently vigorous debate. This book contains the proceedings of a conference designed to widen the debate by reviewing the research on assessment of health care needs and their value, and addressing how these findings may contribute in the framing and implementation of policies for resource allocation in the health service.

Public Health Ethics: Cases Spanning the Globe

Public Health Ethics: Cases Spanning the Globe
Author: Drue H. Barrett
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2016-04-20
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 9783319238463

This Open Access book highlights the ethical issues and dilemmas that arise in the practice of public health. It is also a tool to support instruction, debate, and dialogue regarding public health ethics. Although the practice of public health has always included consideration of ethical issues, the field of public health ethics as a discipline is a relatively new and emerging area. There are few practical training resources for public health practitioners, especially resources which include discussion of realistic cases which are likely to arise in the practice of public health. This work discusses these issues on a case to case basis and helps create awareness and understanding of the ethics of public health care. The main audience for the casebook is public health practitioners, including front-line workers, field epidemiology trainers and trainees, managers, planners, and decision makers who have an interest in learning about how to integrate ethical analysis into their day to day public health practice. The casebook is also useful to schools of public health and public health students as well as to academic ethicists who can use the book to teach public health ethics and distinguish it from clinical and research ethics.

Communities in Action

Communities in Action
Author: National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine
Publisher: National Academies Press
Total Pages: 583
Release: 2017-04-27
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 0309452961

In the United States, some populations suffer from far greater disparities in health than others. Those disparities are caused not only by fundamental differences in health status across segments of the population, but also because of inequities in factors that impact health status, so-called determinants of health. Only part of an individual's health status depends on his or her behavior and choice; community-wide problems like poverty, unemployment, poor education, inadequate housing, poor public transportation, interpersonal violence, and decaying neighborhoods also contribute to health inequities, as well as the historic and ongoing interplay of structures, policies, and norms that shape lives. When these factors are not optimal in a community, it does not mean they are intractable: such inequities can be mitigated by social policies that can shape health in powerful ways. Communities in Action: Pathways to Health Equity seeks to delineate the causes of and the solutions to health inequities in the United States. This report focuses on what communities can do to promote health equity, what actions are needed by the many and varied stakeholders that are part of communities or support them, as well as the root causes and structural barriers that need to be overcome.

Tracking Resources For Primary Health Care: A Framework And Practices In Low- And Middle-income Countries

Tracking Resources For Primary Health Care: A Framework And Practices In Low- And Middle-income Countries
Author: Hong Wang
Publisher: World Scientific
Total Pages: 445
Release: 2020-06-03
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 9811212422

The global health community is broadly in agreement that achievement of the health-related Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) hinges upon both an escalation of the financial resources dedicated to primary health care (PHC) and a more effective use of those resources: more money, better spent. This book introduces and explicates the end-to-end resource tracking and management (RTM) framework, which includes five components that determine effective and efficient financing for PHC: resource mobilization, allocation, utilization, productivity, and targeting.In addition, this book compiles detailed results from the most recent RTM-based resource tracking efforts for PHC in selected countries. This is to demonstrate how the RTM framework can be used to bring a set of separate resource tracking efforts at different stages of flow of funds into a comprehensive process with an end-to-end 'storyline'. In order to build a functional PHC system that addresses access, quality, and equity issues, this book highlights the key (public) financing issues that researchers, technical advisors, and policy makers would need to address in addition to more resources.

Rationing and Resource Allocation in Healthcare

Rationing and Resource Allocation in Healthcare
Author: Harald Schmidt
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 568
Release: 2018
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 9780190200756

You have one liver but three patients awaiting a liver transplant. Who should get the liver? How should we decide? Is it fair to give it to an alcoholic? These are some of the questions that arise in rationing scarce health care resources among particular individuals. Tough resource allocation decisions need to be made at the level of health policy. Budgets of governments and private insurances are limited. Not all drugs and services that appear beneficial to patients or physicians can be covered. Is there a core set of benefits that everyone should be entitled to? If so, how should this set be determined? Are fair decisions just impossible, if we know from the outset than not all needs can be met? Bioethics is entering a new era. Its early work has been dominated by a focus on clinical issues and a narrow set of principles. But in recent years, there has been a marked shift towards addressing broader population-level issues, requiring consideration of more demanding theories in philosophy, political science, economics and further disciplines. At the heart of bioethics' new orientation is achieving clarity on a complex set of questions in rationing and resource allocation. This Anthology comprises 15 original introductions to discrete case studies and issues, followed by excerpts of seminal or otherwise pertinent texts and will be divided into three broad sections - Conceptual Distinctions and Ethical Theory; Rationing; and Resource Allocation. The collection aims to assist all those wanting to be a part of bioethics' 21st century shift, including students in health sciences, philosophy, law and medical ethics; teachers, looking for salient cases and authoritative analyses from multiple perspectives; and practitioners and policy makers interested in reflecting on their daily work, or engaged in shaping future policy and practice. This volume is a reader containing the most important classic articles surrounding the theoretical and practical issues related to rationing and how to allocate scare medical resources. They will be drawn from various places including academic journals, government reports, and popular media. The book will be divided into three broad sections - Conceptual Distinctions and Ethical Theory; Rationing; and Resource Allocation. Each section begins with an introduction and some case studies. Within those three sections will be 16 chapters, with each chapter containing an introduction by the editors, followed by excerpts from the relevant articles, and then questions for discussion and a list of further reading.

Disease Control Priorities in Developing Countries

Disease Control Priorities in Developing Countries
Author: Dean T. Jamison
Publisher: World Bank Publications
Total Pages: 1449
Release: 2006-04-02
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 0821361805

Based on careful analysis of burden of disease and the costs ofinterventions, this second edition of 'Disease Control Priorities in Developing Countries, 2nd edition' highlights achievable priorities; measures progresstoward providing efficient, equitable care; promotes cost-effectiveinterventions to targeted populations; and encourages integrated effortsto optimize health. Nearly 500 experts - scientists, epidemiologists, health economists,academicians, and public health practitioners - from around the worldcontributed to the data sources and methodologies, and identifiedchallenges and priorities, resulting in this integrated, comprehensivereference volume on the state of health in developing countries.

Health System Efficiency

Health System Efficiency
Author: Jonathan Cylus
Publisher: Health Policy
Total Pages: 264
Release: 2016-12-15
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 9789289050418

In this book the authors explore the state of the art on efficiency measurement in health systems and international experts offer insights into the pitfalls and potential associated with various measurement techniques. The authors show that: - The core idea of efficiency is easy to understand in principle - maximizing valued outputs relative to inputs, but is often difficult to make operational in real-life situations - There have been numerous advances in data collection and availability, as well as innovative methodological approaches that give valuable insights into how efficiently health care is delivered - Our simple analytical framework can facilitate the development and interpretation of efficiency indicators.

Allocating Health Care Resources

Allocating Health Care Resources
Author: James M. Humber
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 222
Release: 1995-01-11
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 1592594476

In ALLOCATING HEALTH CARE RESOURCES, leading authorities and researchers expose the basic philosophical, ethical, and economic issues underlying the current health care debate. The contributors wrestle with such complicated issues as whether it is ethical to ration health care, the morality of the worldwide bias against children in allocating health care resources, whether sin taxes can be defended morally, and how to achieve a just health care system. The book also includes an insightful analysis of the Clinton health care reform plan. ALLOCATING HEALTH CARE RESOURCES will be of interest to philosophers, health policy experts, medical ethicists, health professionals, and concerned citizens. It serves to clarify and illuminate the logic and rhetoric of health care reform, and so to help us all achieve a fair and equitable distribution of these precious resources.

Fair Resource Allocation and Rationing at the Bedside

Fair Resource Allocation and Rationing at the Bedside
Author: Marion Danis
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 481
Release: 2014-10-02
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 0199989451

Health systems need to set priorities fairly. In one way or another, part of this important task will fall to physicians. How do they make judgments about resource stewardship, and how should they do so? How can they make such decisions in a manner that is compatible with their clinical duties to patients? In this book, philosophers, bioethicists, physicians, lawyers and health policy experts make the case that priority setting and rationing contribute significantly to the possibility of affordable and fair healthcare and that clinicians play an indispensable role in that process. The book depicts the results of a survey of European physicians about their experiences with rationing and other cost containment strategies, and their perception of scarcity and fairness in their health care systems. Responding to and complementing these findings, commentators discuss why resource allocation and bedside rationing is necessary and justifiable. The book explores how bedside rationing relates to clinical judgments about medical necessity and medical indications, marginal benefits, weak evidence based medicine, off-label use. The book highlights how comparative studies of health care systems can advance more effective and fair bedside rationing through learning from one another. From a practical standpoint, the book offers a number of strategies for health care systems and clinicians to work in tandem to allocate and ration resources as fairly as possible: how to foster more attention to fairness when rationing at the bedside, how to avoid exacerbating health disparities when allocating resources, how to teach about bedside rationing to students, how to discuss rationing more explicitly in the public arena and in the doctor's office.