RLabonté et al entitle their paper in this issue of the International Journal of Health Policy and Management “The Trans-Pacific Partnership: Is It Everything We Feared for Health?” Tantalisingly, they do not directly answer the question they pose, and in this commentary, we suggest that it is the wrong question; we should not ‘fear’ the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) at all, rather we should ...

Background and aim: Grounded theory has taken some different theoretical perspectives since its creation in 1967 by Barney Glaser. Considering that applying grounded theory partly depends on an awareness of its philosophical perspectives, gaining knowledge about these various perspectives is required for health care professionals who are interested in studying the social processes. This review ...

BACKGROUND AND AIM: This study aimed to determine the rate of published qualitative research in the field of public health including dental researches in Iran and to appraise their quality.METHODS: A total of 165 articles which published in 170 Iranian Medical Journals between years 2000 and 2014 were found eligible to the study. 48 papers were selected randomly. The papers were appraised by tw...

This paper deals with the subject of citizenship and people's participation in the health area through an analysis of ideas pertaining to a specific group: health care professionals working in Basic Health Care Clinics in the 3.1 Programmatic Area of the City of Rio de Janeiro (Brazil). The article analyzes their views on the subject and presents them in light of health-related legislation in t...

BACKGROUND More than half a million new items of biomedical research are generated every year and added to Medline. How successful are we at applying this steady accumulation of scientific knowledge and so improving the practice of medicine in the USA? DISCUSSION The conventional wisdom is that the US healthcare system is plagued by serious cost, access, safety and quality weaknesses. A compr...

Introduction This is the third in a series of four papers on the use of qualitative methods in family planning and reproductive health care research. The first paper outlined the three main methods used in qualitative studies1 and the second explored how we can assess the ‘quality’ of qualitative research.2 This paper addresses issues related to the analysis of qualitative data. It begins by di...

The story of AHCPR's struggle with Congress to remain a federal agency is an example of the longer struggle health services research (HSR) has had to hold a priority in the federal budget. But from another perspective, the growth of HSR has been substantial, albeit an up-and-down experience. Its survival during the turbulent years of 1995-1996 is attributed to a fundamental restructuring of its...