A Nordic WelfAre Model? The Nordic countries are all established welfare states, and there has for some time existed a notion of a distinctive Nordic or Scandinavian welfare state; it is often understood in terms of broad, tax-financed public responsibility and legislated, collective, and universalistic solutions that respect employment interest yet aim at welfare and equity goals (1). Lately, ...

BACKGROUND Data from the Nordic health care registers have been of great value in perinatal epidemiological research. It has been assumed that findings from the Nordic population (Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden) are applicable to other populations as well, including the population of the US. OBJECTIVE To describe and compare maternal and infant characteristics between the Nordi...

BACKGROUND Research comparing mortality by socioeconomic status has found that inequalities are not the smallest in the Nordic countries. This is in contrast to expectations given these countries' policy focus on equity. An alternative way of studying inequality has been little used to compare inequalities across welfare states and may yield a different conclusion. METHODS We used average lif...

Obstetrics and gynecology training in the Nordic countries is of a high standard, but the current curriculum varies in the different countries. The Nordic Federation of Societies of Obstetrics and Gynecology (NFOG) Educational Committee organized a course in Copenhagen (8–9 November 2013) to assess the possibilities of harmonizing and further improving the Nordic training in obstetrics and gyne...

BACKGROUND Adequate iodine nutrition is dependent on ground water content, seafood, and, as many countries use iodized cow fodder, dairy products. In most countries, salt fortification programs are needed to assure adequate iodine intake. OBJECTIVES The objectives are threefold: 1) to describe the past and present iodine situation in the Nordic countries, 2) to identify important gaps of know...

The five Nordic countries are characterized by stable political systems based on consensus and interactive contracts between the populations and their governments. There has been a prosperous development through more than half a century, which also has resulted in a model of ’good health care for all’. However from late part of 1980s and during the 1990s it was realised that the cost of health ...

The societies developed in the Nordic countries attract widespread international attention. These societies are among the richest in the world, they are among the most equal in the world, and their inhabitants seem to be among the happiest in the world. These merits and the fact that these countries are secularised, have (post)modern family structures, and always have been (small) open economie...

OBJECTIVE We aim to describe medical services provided by Nordic general practitioners (GPs), and to explore possible differences between the countries. DESIGN AND SETTING We did a comparative analysis of selected data from the Nordic part of the study Quality and Costs of Primary Care in Europe (QUALICOPC). SUBJECTS A total of 875 Nordic GPs (198 Norwegian, 80 Icelandic, 97 Swedish, 212 Da...