This study was funded by a grant from the Federal Office of Rural Health Policy, Health Resources and Services Administration, DHHS (Grant # CSUR00003-03). The opinions and conclusions expressed in the paper are the authors' and no endorsement by the University of Southern Maine or the funding source is intended or should be inferred.

Accessible and quality reproductive health services are critical for low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). After a decade of waning investment in family planning, interest and funding are growing once again. This article assesses whether introducing, removing, or changing user fees for contraception has an effect on contraceptive use. We conducted a search of 14 international databases. We ...

CONTEXT The Kenya Partnership for Health (KPH) program began in 1999, and is currently one of the 12 field projects participating in the WHO's 'Towards Unity for Health initiative' implemented to develop partnership synergies in support of the Primary Health Care (PHC) approach 1. CONTENT This paper illustrates how Program-linked Information Management by Integrative-participatory Research Ap...

STUDY OBJECTIVE To examine the relationships between the use of preventive health services--such as health checks, basic health examination/cancer screening, and daily preventive health practices--and survival of elderly people living in the community. DESIGN AND SETTING A cohort of elderly people aged 65 years and over living in Settsu City, Osaka was followed for 38 months. Data on the hist...

SETTING South Africa. OBJECTIVE To evaluate the long-term effectiveness of infant modified vaccinia Ankara virus-expressing antigen 85A (MVA85A) vaccination against tuberculosis (TB). DESIGN We analysed data from a double-blind randomised placebo-controlled Phase 2b MVA85A infant TB vaccine trial (2009-2012), with extended post-trial follow-up (2012-2014). Isoniazid preventive therapy (IPT)...

BACKGROUND In Pakistan Routine Immunization coverage has been reported to be significantly low due to multiple factors that results in high number of deaths in children under 5. This study was conducted to assess the effectiveness of integrating Community Services to improve Routine immunization coverage in rural district of Pakistan. METHODS A quasi-experimental study with control and interv...

INTRODUCTION Strategic purchasing is one of the mechanisms that can increase access, equity, and efficiency as well as the correct management of health resources. The aim of this study was to extract important and influential factors as necessary infrastructures to implement this method. METHODS In this comprehensive literature review, 13 databases and search engines were searched from 2000 t...

Prevention has been a main issue of recent policy orientations in health care. This renews the interest on how different organizational designs and the definition of payment schemes to providers may affect the incentives to provide preventive health care. We present, both the normative and the positive analyses of the change from independent providers to integrated services. We show the evaluat...

OBJECTIVE To assess maternal and neonatal health services in 49 developing countries. METHODS The services were rated on a scale of 0 to 100 by 10 - 25 experts in each country. The ratings covered emergency and routine services, including family planning, at health centres and district hospitals, access to these services for both rural and urban women, the likelihood that women would receive ...

BACKGROUND Snakebite is a major public health problem in many developing countries. Farmers are particularly exposed to snakes, and due to their rural location often experience delays in accessing formal healthcare. The reasons to use traditional healers may include difficulties in accessing formal healthcare, certain beliefs about snakes and snake venom, tradition, and trust in the capacity of...