the paper published in the january 2015 issue of this journal by gusmano and colleagues entitled “shanghai rising: health improvements as measured by avoidable mortality since 2000” has spurred this commentary. we discuss controversial issues surrounding the concept of avoidable mortality in health service research in general and gusmano’s study in particular. the impact of overall social devel...

Global health innovators must navigate substantial complexities to successfully develop, implement and sustain global health innovations with impact through application of an Integrated InnovationTM approach. We sought to examine the nature of the literature and evidence around mentoring, training and support of global health innovators. We conducted a scoping review searching eight databases w...

International and cultural perspectives of health literacy help deepen the understanding of the global context within which health literacy plays an important role. Throughout this chapter, we explore the significance of health literacy initiatives, interventions, practices, and research for addressing health challenges on a variety of levels in the international and global context. More specif...

Maryland Department of Health (MDH) has been preparing for alignment of its population health initiatives with Maryland's unique All-Payer hospital global budget program. In order to operationalize population health initiatives, it is required to identify a starter set of measures addressing community level health interventions and to collect interoperable data for those measures. The broad ado...

the grand challenge in global health is the inequality in mortality and life expectancy between countries and within countries. according to global health 2035, the lancet commission celebrating the 20th anniversary of the world development report (wdr) of 1993, the world now has the unique opportunity to achieve a grand convergence in global mortality within a generation. this article comments...

while the right to health is increasingly referenced in sustainable development goal (sdg) discussions, its contribution to global health and development remains subject to considerable debate. this hypothesis explores the potential influence of the right to health on the formulation of health goals in 4 major sdg reports. we analyse these reports through a social constructivist lens which view...

over half of the world’s population lives in cities and united nations (un) demographers project an increase of 2.5 billion more urban dwellers by 2050. yet there is too little systematic comparative research on the practice of urban health policy and management (hpam), particularly in the megacities of middle-income and developing nations. we make a case for creating a global database on citie...

Mental, neurological and substance use (MNS) disorders are now the leading cause of disability worldwide, contributing to 23% of global years of life lived with disability (Whiteford et al. 2013). Most of this burden is carried by lowand middle-income countries (LMICs). However, MNS disorders in LMICs do not receive the research attention or service personnel they deserve (Saxena et al. 2006), ...

BACKGROUND People with disabilities represent approximately 6% of the Senegalese population. They face significant barriers to accessing health care. Although several initiatives have been implemented to improve access to health care for this vulnerable population, few studies have examined the effects of these initiatives. We conducted a mixed methods study in three neighborhoods in Saint-Loui...