High medicine prices and low availability are major barriers to accessing medicines and achieving better health outcomes. These problems are more acute in low-income countries where the absence of social insurance forces people to directly pay for health care. Reliable data on medicine prices and availability are needed to develop sound pricing policies. The World Health Organization (WHO) and ...

The UK's 100,000 Genomes Project has the aim of sequencing 100,000 genomes from UK National Health Service (NHS) patients while concomitantly transforming clinical care such that whole genome sequencing becomes routine clinical practice in the UK. Policymakers claim that the project will revolutionize NHS care. We wished to explore the 100,000 Genomes Project, and in particular, the extent to w...

Information and communication technology (ICT) tools are known to facilitate communication and processing of information and sharing of knowledge by electronic means. In Nigeria, the lack of adequate capacity on the use of ICT by health sector policymakers constitutes a major impediment to the uptake of research evidence into the policymaking process. The objective of this study was to improve ...

In the last few years the landscape has changed dramatically for policymakers seeking to use research evidence in the policymaking process. The landscape has also changed for the many stakeholders seeking to use research evidence to influence the policymaking process. The task once seemed overwhelming given the dearth of synthesized research evidence on the ‘‘big’’, typically multifaceted, ques...

CONTEXT In Nigeria, abortion is permitted only to save the life of a woman. Unsafe abortion is common and is a major cause of maternal mortality, yet policymakers have done little to address the problem. METHODS In-depth interviews were conducted in 2008 with 49 Nigerian politicians and officials to assess their awareness of unsafe abortion and its role in maternal mortality, and to determine...

BACKGROUND The normality of smoking that children are exposed to is associated with increased risk of smoking uptake. To better understand policymaking that could address this issue, our aim was to identify and document the views of New Zealand policymakers regarding the example of smoking behaviour to children, and the policy responses they preferred. METHOD We analysed public documents for ...

OBJECTIVE To describe the knowledge and beliefs of public policymakers on social inequalities in health and policies to reduce them in cities from different parts of Europe during 2010 and 2011. DESIGN Phenomenological qualitative study. SETTING 13 European cities. PARTICIPANTS 19 elected politicians and officers with a directive status from 13 European cities. MAIN OUTCOME Policymaker'...

Since 2011, Germany's Pharmaceutical Market Restructuring Act has mandated that all newly introduced drugs are subject to an assessment of their benefits in relation to a comparator, typically the current standard treatment. For drugs found to have some additional benefit, the manufacturer and the statutory health insurers negotiate a price. For drugs found to have no additional benefit, their ...