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Primary care practices provide a gate-keeping function in many health care systems. Since depressive disorders are highly prevalent in primary care settings, reliable detection and diagnoses are a first step t...
Where hard-to-access populations (such as those living in insecure areas) lack access to basic health services, relief agencies, donors, and ministries of health face a dilemma in selecting the most effective ...
Diagnosing tuberculosis in children remains a great challenge in developing countries. Health staff working in the front line of the health service delivery system has a major responsibility for timely identif...
Aims of the present study are the following: 1. to describe the rationale and methodology of the Services and Health for Elderly in Long TERm care (SHELTER) study, a project funded by the European Union, aimed...
The productive capacity of retired people is usually not valued. However, some retirees produce much more than we might expect. This diary-based study identifies the activities of older people, and suggests so...
The implementation and utilization of programmes for the prevention of mother-to-child transmission (PMTCT) of HIV in most low income countries has been described as sub-optimal. As planners and service provid...
Client-initiated HIV counselling and testing has been scaled up in many African countries, in the form of voluntary counselling and testing (VCT). Test rates have remained low, with HIV-related stigma being an...
Patients often express strong preferences for the forms of treatment available for their disease. Incorporating these preferences into the process of treatment decision-making might improve patients' adherence...
The primary behavioural risks for the most common causes of mortality and morbidity in developed countries are tobacco smoking, poor nutrition, risky alcohol use, and physical inactivity. Evidence, guidelines ...
Congenital heart disease (CHD) accounts for a major proportion of disease in the pediatric age group. The objective of the study was to estimate the cost of illness associated with CHD pre, intra and postopera...
National Health Service (NHS) mental health workforce configuration is at the heart of successful delivery, and providers are advised to produce professional development strategies. Recent policy changes in En...
In India, private pharmacies are ubiquitous yet critical establishments that facilitate community access to medicines. These are often the first points of treatment seeking in parts of India and other low inco...
Preventive approaches to health are disproportionately accessed by the more affluent and recent health improvement policy advocates the use of targeted preventive primary care to reduce risk factors in poorer ...
Prostate cancer (PCa) is the most common cancer affecting men in the United States. The initial treatment and subsequent monitoring of PCa patients places a large burden on U.S. health care systems. The object...
The aim of the present study was to assess the performance of three primary care-led initiatives providing structured care to patients with Type 2 diabetes in Ireland, a country with minimal incentives to prom...
As many other European healthcare systems the Danish healthcare system (DHS) has targeted chronic condition care in its reform efforts. Benchmarking is a valuable tool to identify areas for improvement. Prior ...
Delivery of community-based prevention services for HIV, malaria, and diarrhea is a major priority and challenge in rural Africa. Integrated delivery campaigns may offer a mechanism to achieve high coverage an...
Antiretroviral therapy (ART) clinic populations have expanded enormously in the successful Malawi ART scale-up programme. Overcrowding, long waiting times and living far away from the clinic may affect the ext...
Social audits are typically observational studies, combining qualitative and quantitative uptake of evidence with consultative interpretation of results. This often falters on issues of causality because their...
This article is part of a Supplement: Volume 11 Supplement 2
Focus groups, rapid assessment procedures, key informant interviews and institutional reviews of local health services provide valuable insights on health service resources and performance. A long-standing cha...
This article is part of a Supplement: Volume 11 Supplement 2
Maps can portray trends, patterns, and spatial differences that might be overlooked in tabular data and are now widely used in health research. Little has been reported about the process of using maps to commu...
This article is part of a Supplement: Volume 11 Supplement 2
Corruption pervades educational and other institutions worldwide and medical schools are not exempt. Empirical evidence about levels and types of corruption in medical schools is sparse. We conducted surveys i...
This article is part of a Supplement: Volume 11 Supplement 2
Unofficial payments in health services around the world are widespread and as varied as the health systems in which they occur. We reviewed the main lessons from social audits of petty corruption in health ser...
This article is part of a Supplement: Volume 11 Supplement 2
In rebuilding devastated health services, the government of Afghanistan has provided access to basic services mainly by contracting with non-government organisations (NGOs), and more recently the Strengthening...
This article is part of a Supplement: Volume 11 Supplement 2
The Bangladesh government implemented a pilot Hospital Improvement Initiative (HII) in five hospitals in Sylhet division between 1998 and 2003. This included management and behaviour change training for staff,...
This article is part of a Supplement: Volume 11 Supplement 2
Since 2005, the Tłįchǫ Community Services Agency (TCSA) in Canada's Northwest Territories (NT) has addressed rising rates of sexually transmitted infections (STI). In 2009, STI rates in the NT were ten times h...
This article is part of a Supplement: Volume 11 Supplement 2
In Bangladesh, widespread dissatisfaction with government health services did not improve during the Health and Population Sector Programme (HPSP) reforms from 1998-2003. A 2003 national household survey docum...
This article is part of a Supplement: Volume 11 Supplement 2
Nigeria continues to have high rates of maternal morbidity and mortality. This is partly associated with lack of adequate obstetric care, partly with high risks in pregnancy, including heavy work. We examined ...
This article is part of a Supplement: Volume 11 Supplement 2
The Maldives faces challenges in the provision of health services to its population scattered across many small islands. The government commissioned two separate reproductive health surveys, in 1999 and 2004, ...
This article is part of a Supplement: Volume 11 Supplement 2
After election in 1994, the South African government implemented national and regional programmes, such as the Wild Coast Spatial Development Initiative (SDI), to provoke economic growth and to decrease inequi...
This article is part of a Supplement: Volume 11 Supplement 2
The government of Pakistan introduced devolution in 2001. Responsibility for delivery of most health services passed from provincial to district governments. Two national surveys examined public opinions, use,...
This article is part of a Supplement: Volume 11 Supplement 2
Four social audits in 1998, 2003, 2006 and 2009 identified actions that Nicaragua could take to reduce corruption and public perception in primary health care and other key services.
This article is part of a Supplement: Volume 11 Supplement 2
Community participation was a core tenet of Primary Health Care as articulated in the 1970s. How this could be generated and maintained was less clear. This historical article describes development of protocol...
This article is part of a Supplement: Volume 11 Supplement 2
Health planners and managers make decisions based on their appreciation of causality. Social audits question the assumptions behind this and try to improve quality of available evidence. The method has its ori...
This article is part of a Supplement: Volume 11 Supplement 2
This article is part of a Supplement: Volume 11 Supplement 2
Previous research addressed the development of a classification scheme for quality improvement systems in European hospitals. In this study we explore associations between the 'maturity' of the hospitals' qual...
Continuity of care is a key component of care in complex and chronic conditions. Despite its importance, it is often absent in chronic-disease management. One challenge has been identifying tools to measure ca...
Healthcare service innovations are considered to play a pivotal role in improving organisational efficiency and responding effectively to healthcare needs. Nevertheless, healthcare organisations encounter majo...
We carried out an investigation in five provinces in China to assess treatment adherence and identify factors associated with insufficient treatment adherence in tuberculosis (TB) patients in mountainous, rura...
According to a national reference, 15% of German children and adolescents are overweight (including obese) and 6.3% are obese. An earlier study analysed the impact of childhood overweight and obesity on differ...
From a health services perspective, peer-based resources merit special attention. Participation in self-help fellowships, like the Twelve Step Groups (TSGs), have been shown to improve outcomes of patients wit...
Total knee arthroplasty (TKA) is an effective, but also cost-intensive health care intervention for end stage osteoarthritis. This investigation was designed to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of TKA before ve...
Most services provided by health and social care organisations for older people living at home rely on interprofessional working (IPW). Although there is research investigating what supports and inhibits how p...
There is widespread agreement on the need for scaling up in the health sector to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). But many countries are not on track to reach the MDG targets. The dominant appr...
Medical residents are key figures in delivering health care and an important target group for patient safety education. Reporting incidents is an important patient safety domain, as awareness of vulnerabilitie...
Little is known about how to use patient feedback to improve experiences of health care. The Veterans Health Administration (VA) conducts regular patient surveys that have indicated improved care experiences o...
This study aims to design an empirical test on the sensitivity of the prescribing doctors to the price afforded for the patient, and to apply it to the population data of primary care dispensations for cardiov...
Comparisons of patient experiences between providers are increasingly used as an index of performance. The present study describes the ability of patient experience surveys to discriminate between healthcare p...
Efficacious strategies for the primary prevention of coronary heart disease (CHD) are underused, and, when used, have low adherence. Existing efforts to improve use and adherence to these efficacious strategie...
Safe and timely access to effective and appropriate medication through primary care settings is a major concern for all countries addressing both acute and chronic disease burdens. Legislation for nurses and o...
