Working Paper
Do bigger health budgets cushion pandemics?
How has government healthcare spending prepared countries for tackling the COVID-19 pandemic? Arguably, spending is the primary policy tool of governments in providing effective health. We argue that the effectiveness of spending in reducing COVID...
Journal Article
Health-system equity, egalitarian democracy and COVID-19 outcomes
The COVID-19 pandemic has led to a spate of studies showing a close connection between inequitable access to health care, welfare services and adverse outcomes from the pandemic. Others have argued that democratic governments have generally failed...
Journal Special Issue
Measuring quality of care
The United Nations sustainable development goal (SDG) 3 seeks “to ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all and at all ages”. To build healthcare systems that were able to progress towards the millennium development goals, many countries...
Journal Article
Quality of care
Part of Journal Special Issue
Measuring quality of care
Working Paper
Beyond access to basic services
The social determinants of health have not been studied extensively in low-income contexts, where most studies focus on access to medical care. We undertake a retrospective cross-sectional analysis of the social determinants of health in Mozambique...
Working Paper
Thailand’s Development Strategy and Growth Performance
Thailand’s development strategy has been strongly market-oriented and open to trade and investment flows with the rest of the world. Since the late 1950s, its growth performance has been outstanding. Poverty incidence has declined dramatically, but...
Blog
Quality of routine labor and delivery care in Uttar Pradesh, India: Are private facilities better?
by
Sarah Hodin
June 2017
In India, the percentage of women who delivered in a health facility increased from roughly 35% in 2000 to 79% in 2014. Despite this progress, given...
Working Paper
Poor Health Reporting
Researchers often rely on household survey data to investigate health disparities and the incidence and prevalence of illness. These self-reported health measures are often biased due to information asymmetry or differences in reference groups. Using...
Working Paper
Developing global indicators for quality of maternal and newborn care
Objective: To assess the feasibility of applying the World Health Organization’s proposed 15 indicators of quality of care for maternal and newborn health at health-facility level in low- and middle-income settings. Methods: Six of the indicators are...
Working Paper
Health Shocks and Coping Strategies
The objectives of the study are three-fold: to investigate who are vulnerable to welfare loss from health shocks, what are the household responses to cope with the economic burden of health shocks and if policy responses like state health insurance...
Journal Article
Improving health-care quality in resource-poor settings
Improvements in health-care quality can contribute to healthier populations. However, many global and national health strategies are not sufficiently considering the issues of measuring and improving health-care quality in lowresource settings. The...
Journal Article
Assessing the quality of primary care in Haiti
Objective To develop a composite measure of primary care quality and apply it to Haiti’s primary care system. Methods Using the Primary Health Care Performance Initiative’s framework, we defined four domains of primary care service delivery: (i)...
Journal Article
Evaluation of a social franchising and telemedicine programme and the care provided for childhood diarrhoea and pneumonia, Bihar, India
Objective To evaluate the impact on the quality of the care provided for childhood diarrhoea and pneumonia in Bihar, India, of a large-scale, social franchising and telemedicine programme – the World Health Partners’ Sky Program. Methods We...
Journal Article
Nurse-led HIV services and quality of care at health facilities in Kenya, 2014–2016
Objective To develop a novel measure to characterize human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) programme quality at health facilities in Kenya and explore its associations with patient- and facility-level characteristics. Methods We developed a composite...
Journal Article
Understanding and measuring quality of care
Existing definitions and measurement approaches of quality of health care often fail to address the complexities involved in understanding quality of care. It is perceptions of quality, rather than clinical indicators of quality, that drive service...
Journal Article
Implementation research to improve quality of maternal and newborn health care, Malawi
Objective To evaluate the impact of a performance-based financing scheme on maternal and neonatal health service quality in Malawi. Methods We conducted a non-randomized controlled before and after study to evaluate the effects of district- and...
Journal Article
Observations of infection prevention and control practices in primary health care, Kenya
Objective To assess compliance with infection prevention and control practices in primary health care in Kenya. Methods We used an observational, patient-tracking tool to assess compliance with infection prevention and control practices by 1680...
Journal Article
Improving water, sanitation and hygiene in health-care facilities, Liberia
Problem The lack of proper water and sanitation infrastructures and poor hygiene practices in health-care facilities reduces facilities’ preparedness and response to disease outbreaks and decreases the communities’ trust in the health services...
Working Paper
Measurement and Explanation of Inequality in Health and Health Care in Low-Income Settings
This paper describes approaches to the measurement and explanation of income-related inequality and inequity in health care financing, health care utilization and health and considers the applicability and the feasibility of these methods in low...
Working Paper
Longevity in Russia's Regions
This paper examines the impact of changes in poverty and public health spending on inter-temporal variations in longevity using a unique regional-level dataset that covers 77 regions of Russia over the period 1994-2000. The dynamic panel data model...
Working Paper
Fifty years of Asian experience in the spread of education and healthcare
This paper analyses the dramatic spread of education and healthcare in Asia and also the large variations in that spread across and within countries over 50 years. Apart from differences in initial conditions and income levels, the nature of the...
Working Paper
Hospital Efficiency in Sub-Saharan Africa
This study evaluates the technical efficiency and productivity of a sample of public sector hospitals in three provinces of South Africa using the non- parametric techniques of data envelopment analysis (DEA) and DEA-based Malmquist productivity...