National health accounts data from 1996 to 2010: a systematic review.

Objective: To collect, compile and evaluate publicly available national health accounts (NHA) reports produced worldwide between 1996 and 2010.

Methods: We downloaded country-generated NHA reports from the World Health Organization global health expenditure database and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) StatExtract website. We also obtained reports from Abt Associates, through contacts in individual countries and through an online search.

Breakdowns in coordinated decision making at and above the incident management team level: an analysis of three large scale Australian wildfires.

Emergency situations are by their nature difficult to manage and success in such situations is often highly dependent on effective team coordination. Breakdowns in team coordination can lead to significant disruption to an operational response. Breakdowns in coordination were explored in three large-scale bushfires in Australia: the Kilmore East fire, the Wangary fire, and the Canberra Firestorm.

Laminin- and basement membrane-polycaprolactone blend nanofibers as a scaffold for regenerative medicine.

Mimicking one or more components of the basement membrane (BM) holds great promise for overcoming insufficiencies in tissue engineering therapies. We have electrospun laminin nanofibers (NFs) isolated from the murine Engelbreth-Holm Swarm (EHS) tumor and evaluated them as a scaffold for embryonic stem cell culture. Seeded human embryonic stem cells were found to better maintain their undifferentiated, colony environment when cultured on laminin NFs compared to laminin mats, with 75% remaining undifferentiated on NFs.

Regional variation in the allocation of development assistance for health.

Background: The Global Burden of Disease (GBD) 2010 Study has published disability-adjusted life year (DALY) data at both regional and country levels from 1990 to 2010. Concurrently, the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) has published estimates of development assistance for health (DAH) at the country-disease level for this same period of time.

Findings: We use disease burden data from the GBD 2010 study and financing data from IHME to calculate ratios of DAH to DALYs across regions and diseases.

Estimating health expenditure shares from household surveys.

Objective: To quantify the effects of household expenditure survey characteristics on the estimated share of a household's expenditure devoted to health.

Methods: A search was conducted for all country surveys reporting data on health expenditure and total household expenditure. Data on total expenditure and health expenditure were extracted from the surveys to generate the health expenditure share (i.

The global financial crisis has led to a slowdown in growth of funding to improve health in many developing countries.

How has funding to developing countries for health improvement changed in the wake of the global financial crisis? The question is vital for policy making, planning, and advocacy purposes in donor and recipient countries alike. We measured the total amount of financial and in-kind assistance that flowed from both public and private channels to improve health in developing countries during the period 1990-2011. The data for the years 1990-2009 reflect disbursements, while the numbers for 2010 and 2011 are preliminary estimates.

Organizational pressures and mitigating strategies in small commercial aviation: findings from Alaska.

Introduction: Recent attention has focused on the way in which organizational factors can erode safety in aviation, particularly in regions that have a high accident rate, such as Alaska. The present study builds on this work by examining the direct and indirect pressures that can be exerted on pilots by Alaskan operators. In addition, the paper examines ways in which organizations and individuals manage the effects of pressure.