Private sector providers are the most commonly consulted source of care for child illnesses in many countries, offering significant opportunities to expand the reach of essential child health services and products. Yet collaboration with private providers presents major challenges - the suitability and quality of the services they provide is often questionable and governments' capacity to regul...

INTRODUCTION The paper highlights key trajectories and outcomes of the recent policy developments toward integrated health care delivery systems in Quebec and Ontario in the primary care sector and in the development of regional networks of health and social services. It particularly explores how policy legacies, interests and cultures may be mitigated to develop and sustain different models of...

BACKGROUND One-in-five people in the UK experience anxiety and/or depression in later life. However, anxiety and depression remain poorly detected in older people, particularly in those with chronic physical ill health. In the UK, a stepped care approach, to manage common mental health problems, is advocated which includes service provision from non-statutory organisations (including third/volu...

The social impacts of products and service life cycles are increasingly of interest among policy makers and stakeholders. Workers’ issues are considered to be a source of key inventory data to assess social impacts, and are crucial in moving towards social sustainability. There is a need to develop a social inventory database for evaluating social impacts of products and services. This study ai...

Health care reform seems fundamental to the coherence and the future of the welfare state. Health programs occupy a central place in modern systems of social protection, and it is now quite difficult — albeit not impossible, as exemplified by the United States — to conceive of social justice without including health care in the list of goods that should be provided to all as a right of citizens...

The Dutch social rented sector has acquired an international reputation because of its social nature and the way it has evolved. With around 32% of the total stock, the size of the sector is much bigger than in other western European countries. Also the development after the second world war is unique. This current position is determined by the specific structure of the Dutch welfare state and ...

BACKGROUND Information on socioeconomic determinants in the management of diabetes mellitus is scarce in lower middle income countries. The aim of this study is to describe the socioeconomic determinants of management and complications of diabetes mellitus in a lower middle income setting. METHODS Cross sectional descriptive study on a stratified random sample of 1300 individuals was conducte...

Many researchers have explored how neoliberal restructuring of the workplace has reduced the standard of living and increased workplace stress among private sector employees. However, few have focused on how neoliberal restructuring of public policy has had similar effects on the public sector workforce. Using original case study research, the authors examine how two iconic pieces of neoliberal...

A major policy issue in developing countries is the lack of formal insurance markets. A popular approach to this problem is compulsory social health insurance (SI). The movement towards SI has been motivated not only by the desire to expand insurance coverage, but also by fiscal pressure to shift the burden of delivering and financing health care from the public sector to the private. In this p...