Learning from low income countries: what are the lessons?: Communities improve health systems

Learning from low income countries: mental health.

Thirty one per cent of all years lived with disability are due to mental illness. Mental health problems are important in every country, even those with high burdens of illness due to infectious diseases. Wealthy countries generally have more services to combat mental health problems than low income countries. In many low income countries there is typically one psychiatrist per population of 1 ...

Community Health Worker Programs to Improve Healthcare Access and Equity: Are They Only Relevant to Low- and Middle-Income Countries?

Background Community Health Workers (CHWs) are proven to be highly effective in low- and middle-income countries with many examples of successful large-scale programs. There is growing interest in deploying CHW programs in high-income countries to address inequity in healthcare access and outcomes amongst population groups facing disadvantage. This study is the first that examines the scope and...

The Nutrition Transition in High and Low-Income Countries: What are the Policy Lessons?

The world has seen a remarkable shift from a period when diets, activity patterns and body composition were characterized by the period termed the receding famine pattern to one dominated by nutrition-related non-communicable diseases (NR-NCDs). This presentation first examines the speed of these changes, summarizes dietary changes, and provides some sense of the way the burden of obesity is sh...

Policy dialogue to improve health outcomes in low income countries: what are the issues and way forward?

BACKGROUND This paper has three objectives: to review the health development landscape in the World Health Organization African Region, to discuss the role of health policy dialogue in improving harmonisation and alignment to national health policies and strategic plans, and to provide an analytical view of the critical factors in realising a good outcome from a health policy dialogue process. ...

What are the principles that should guide mental health policies in low- and middle-income countries?