Public-private partnership (PPP) initiatives are extending around the world, especially in Europe, as an innovation to traditional public health systems, with the intention of making them more efficient.There is a varied range of PPP models with different degrees of responsibility from simple public sector contracts with the private, up to the complete privatisation of the service. As such, we ...

In developing nations, diverse health reform programs are affecting the design, financing and delivery of health care services as well as public health practice. This paper summarizes the characteristics of major reform strategies seeking to improve efficiency, equity and quality. Opportunities and risks for tuberculosis control are identified, as are responses in managing the reform transition...

The field of public health services and systems research (PHSSR) has emerged over the past decade to produce the evidence needed to address critical uncertainties about how best to organize, finance, and deliver effective public health strategies to all Americans. To advance these efforts, a national PHSSR research agenda-setting process was used to identify a broad inventory of information nee...

This is a commentary on Gilbert and colleagues’ (1) paper on morality and markets in the National Health Service (NHS). Morality and values are not ephemeral qualities and universal healthcare is not simply an aspiration; it has to be enshrined in law. The creation of the UK NHS in 1948 was underpinned by core legal duties which required a system of public funding and delivery to follow. The mo...

unintended pregnancy is among the most troubling public health problems and a major reproductive health issue worldwide imposing appreciable socioeconomic burden on individuals and society. governments generally plan to control growth of births (especially wanted births as well as orphans and illegitimate births) imposing extra burden on public funding of the governments which inevitably affect...

OBJECTIVE To assess the existing situation relating to investments made by development partners in the health sector in Pakistan. METHODS This was a retrospective study completed over a period of 6 months in which financial data for the year July 2004 to June 2005 was collected. A uniform matrix was circulated to all the stakeholders in public sector and international donors who had a stake i...

The authors of this paper use a case study approach to document and analyze the interactions that arise between two healthcare payers in Canada: the provincial public healthcare insurance plans and the provincial workers' compensation boards. Through a documentary review and semi-structured key-respondent interviews, the study identified a set of policy events and decisions undertaken by each p...

BACKGROUND People who lead or manage public health agencies have multiple needs for information in order to do their jobs effectively. In seeking to investigate "what works" in public health practice, investigators in the field of public health systems and services research (PHSSR) have largely overlapping information needs but often require a greater detail, specificity, or comprehensiveness t...

OBJECTIVE The objective was to investigate public funding policies for abortion in countries with liberal or liberally interpreted laws (defined as permitting abortion for economic or social reasons or upon request). STUDY DESIGN In May 2011-February 2012 and June 2013-December 2014, we researched online resources and conducted an email-based survey among reproductive health experts to determ...