How should we define health?

O4: Parents, Teachers and Child Education to Prevent Trauma of Traffic Accidents among Children

The most important strategy to modify high risk behavior, to prevent traffic accident and decrease death is effective education. It is necessary to have systematic steps with scientific background to educate effectively. The health educator has essential role in every education program; therefore the first question to ask is who should educate? The next in an education for reduce traffic accide...

On the Path to UHC – Global Evidence Must Go Local to Be Useful; Comment on “Disease Control Priorities Third Edition Is Published: A Theory of Change Is Needed for Translating Evidence to Health Policy”

The Disease Control Priorities (DCP) publications have pioneered new ways of thinking about investing in health. We agree with Norheim, that a useful first step to advance efforts to translate DCP’s global evidence into local health priorities, is to develop a clear Theory of Change (ToC). However, a ToC that aims to define how global evidence (DCP and others) can be used to inform national pol...

We Need to Measure and Address Corruption and Poor Governance in Health Systems; Comment on “We Need to Talk About Corruption in Health Systems”

Hutchinson et al offer a compelling argument for greater attention to and work in corruption in healthcare. We indeed need to talk about corruption, to understand and to grasp how to prevent and address it. This paper lays out some of the rationale for how to define the research questions, how best to address corruption – arguing that governance rather than corruption may offer a preferred star...

Define and Conquer: How Semantics Foster Progress; A Response to Recent Commentaries

Diffusion of Innovation in Mental Health Policy Adoption: What Should We Ask about the Quality of Policy and the Role of Stakeholders in this Process?; Comment on “Cross-National Diffusion of Mental Health Policy”

In his recent study, Gordon Shen analyses a pertinent question facing the global mental health research and practice community today; that of how and why mental health policy is or is not adopted by national governments. This study identifies becoming a World Health Organization (WHO) member nation, and being in regional proximity to countries which have adopted a mental health policy as suppor...

Some Things Are Rarely Discussed in Public – on the Discourse of Corruption in Healthcare; Comment on “We Need to Talk About Corruption in Health Systems”

In an editorial titled “We Need to Talk About Corruption in Health Systems” the authors Hutchinson, Balabanova, and McKee hope to encourage a wider conversation about corruption in the health sector. Such conversations are difficult to hold for at least five reasons; it is hard to define corruption; corruption may allow some fragile health systems to subsist, shifting blame – are those involved...