Health, and specifically the cost of health care, is of great concern to public policy makers and to the public. Medical care is something we all want, in large part because medicine has reduced death and disability dramatically over the last several decades. However, there is a significant problem of rising cost, today consuming approximately $2.4 trillion annually in the United States and inc...

Benjamin Heath is a second-year graduate student at the Monterey Institute of International Studies. As a graduate research assistant at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies, Heath focuses on domestic preparedness issues within the Weapons of Mass Destruction Terrorism Project. Within the Chemical and Biological Weapons Nonproliferation Project, Heath researches and analyzes the chemical and...

This qualitative study was performed at the adult Intensive Care Unit (ICU) of a public hospital in Southern Brazil with the objective to evaluate the implemented welcoming strategies. Participants included 13 patients and 23 relatives. Data collection was performed from July to October 2008, utilizing semi-structured interviews. All interviews were recorded. Data analysis was performed using t...

In our secular society, human health is one of the most important values. This helps explain why the US spends 14% of its GDP on health care. The majority of Americans are vitally concerned about their health. To the extent that people believe that health care institutions and finance mechanisms affect their personal health, they are vitally concerned with these institutions and mechanisms. Man...

BACKGROUND The global economic crisis saw recessionary conditions in most EU countries. Ireland's severe recession produced pro-cyclical health spending cuts. Yet, human resources for health (HRH) are the most critical of inputs into a health system and an important economic driver. The aim of this article is to evaluate how the Irish health system coped with austerity in relation to HRH and wh...

A looming question for policy makers is how growing diversity of the US elderly population and greater use of home and community-based services will affect demand for long-term care workers. We used national surveys to analyze current use and staffing of long-term care, project demand for long-term care services and workers through 2030, and assess how projections varied if we changed assumptio...