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...
Blog
From the Editor's Desk (August 2012)
Tony Addison With this issue, Angle returns refreshed from its Nordic summer break. The sun continues to shine on the Baltic, although it is getting...
Working Paper
User Charges for Health Care
The paper reviews the theoretical basis for the application of user fees in the public health sector in low-income countries with particular reference to the special characteristics of medical care as a commodity. The general equilibrium efficiency...
Working Paper
Health Status and Health Policy in Sub-Saharan Africa
This paper discusses the main changes in infant, child and maternal mortality which have occurred over 1960-1995 in Sub-Saharan Africa and analyses the main factors responsible for the observed shifts in these health trends. To do so, the paper...
Working Paper
Debt Relief and Health Care in Kenya
Kenya’s external debt has continued to swell over the years, and despite the country meeting its debt commitment through regular servicing, this has been done at the expense of key social services such as health, education, water and sanitation...
Blog
UNU-WIDER Inequality Conference 2014: Country Comparisons and Conceptual Approaches
by
Roger Williamson
December 2014
18 December 2014 Roger Williamson In an earlier article I reviewed a number of the high-profile contributions to the September 2014 conference on...
Blog
Report from Gender Equality Results Meeting
by
Roger Williamson
January 2014
Roger Williamson The Danish State Secretary for Development Policy Charlotte Slente, welcomed the participants and contributors to the meeting and...
Blog
Multidimensional Poverty in the Democratic Republic of Congo
by
Malokele Nanivazo
June 2014
25 June 2014 Malokele Nanivazo After a long series of conflicts and apparent macroeconomic mismanagement, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) seems...
Journal Article
Non-Clinical Interventions for Acute Respiratory Infections and Diarrhoeal Diseases among Young Children in Developing Countries
To assess the effectiveness of non-clinical interventions against acute respiratory infections and diarrhoeal diseases among young children in developing countries.
Working Paper
Healthcare equity and COVID-19
Scholars of public health typically focus on societal equity for explaining public health outcomes. Indeed, the COVID-19 pandemic has led to a spate of studies showing a tight connection between inequitable access to healthcare, welfare services, and...
Journal Article
Beyond access to basic services: perspectives on social health determinants of Mozambique
A wide range of evidence shows systematic differences in health status among social groups, which are associated with unequal exposure to and distribution of the social determinants of health (SDH). However, the role of these SDH has not been studied...
Journal Article
Improving maternal health care in a post-conflict setting
We evaluate a development programme with an important maternal health care component in the Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh. The region and its mostly indigenous people experienced violent conflict in the past and face a constant risk of...
Working Paper
Investing in Health for Economic Development
Health is an asset with an intrinsic value as well as an instrumental value. Good health is a source of wellbeing and highly valued throughout the world. Health is not only the absence of illness, but capacity to develop a person’s potential. Health...
Working Paper
Ethnic fragmentation, public good provision, and inequality in India, 1988-2012
Using data from various rounds of the nationally representative NSSO survey between 1988 and 2012, we first construct national, state, and district-level figures for overall, within and between consumption inequality. We find an increase in...
Working Paper
Impact of post-conflict development interventions on maternal healthcare utilization
We evaluate the effectiveness of a post-conflict development programme on maternal health-care utilization in the Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh. Our work varies from conventional impact evaluation studies because of the inclusion of two post...
News
Call for Papers: Measuring quality-of-care in the context of sustainable development goal 3
The Bulletin of the World Health Organization will publish a theme issue on quality of-care in the era of SDGs. This theme issue will include original research articles on quality-of-care in low- and middle-income countries. The selection of this research will prioritize rigorous methods, generalizability across contexts, and salience of findings for policy. The deadline for submission is 31 May 2016.