Individual level risk factors for violence have been widely studied, but little is known about country-level determinants, particularly in low and middle-income countries. We hypothesized that income inequality, through its detrimental effects on social cohesion, would be related to an increase in violence worldwide, and in low and middle-income countries in particular. We examined country-leve...

By using the household data on food consumption, income and other social indicators including activity status, age, literacy, place of residence employment, and marital status, this paper aims to investigate the transitory impact of temporary and permanent income shocks on food consumption in Iran over the period 2009-2014. To study the deterministic effects of the household on food consumption...

The focus of this study is on the impact of World Bank structural adjustment operations on health expenditures and outcomes. We compare trends and levels of real per capita public spending on health, private consumption (which is the resource base for private health expenditures), and groupings child mortality indicators in four groups of countries. These are: (i) countries that started to borr...

OBJECTIVES Better insights into health care utilization and out-of-pocket expenditures for non-communicable chronic diseases (NCCD) are needed to develop accessible health care and limit the increasing financial burden of NCCDs in Sub-Saharan Africa. METHODS A household survey was conducted in rural Kwara State, Nigeria, among 5,761 individuals. Data were obtained using biomedical and socio-e...

BACKGROUND This study aimed to examine the availability, use, and affordability of medicines in urban China following the 2009 Health Care System Reform that included implementation of universal health coverage (UHC). METHODS This longitudinal study was performed in Hangzhou (high income, eastern China) and Baoji (lower income, western China). Five yearly household surveys were conducted (one...

The purpose of this study was to (1) evaluate the mechanical efficiency (ME) of two commercially available lever-propulsion mechanisms for wheelchairs and (2) compare the ME of lever propulsion with hand rim propulsion within the same wheelchair. Of the two mechanisms, one contained a torsion spring while the other used a roller clutch design. We hypothesized that the torsion spring mechanism w...

The present paper attempts to find out the major determining factors of catastrophic payment in health care, and the impact of such expenditure on household economic status. A survey of 3150 households in West Bengal, India, was analyzed using multivariate logistic regression models to identify factors associated with catastrophic health expenditures, defined as household spending on health gre...