"Healthy Eating - Healthy Action": evaluating New Zealand's obesity prevention strategy.

Background: New Zealand rates of obesity and overweight have increased since the 1980s, particularly among indigenous Māori people, Pacific people and those living in areas of high deprivation. New Zealand's response to the obesity epidemic has been The Healthy Eating-Healthy Action: Oranga Kai - Oranga Pumau (HEHA) Strategy ('the Strategy'), launched in 2003. Because the HEHA Strategy explicitly recognises the importance of evaluation and the need to create an evidence base to support future initiatives, the Ministry of Health has commissioned a Consortium of researchers to evaluate the Strategy as a whole.

Health professionals' views of contracting for infection control in the NHS internal market.

This paper reports a national study which investigated the involvement of infection control professionals in (and their views about) the formal processes of contracting for health care in the NHS internal market. Health care professionals needed to be involved contracting, if it was to be effective. The study found that many infection control professionals were not, in fact, involved in contracting, while the importance of both contracts and informal professional networks were recognised But respondents did not think that their professional networks entirely compensated for their lack of involvement in contracting.

Waiting times for hospital admissions: the impact of GP fundholding.

Waiting times for hospital care are a significant issue in the UK National Health Service (NHS). The reforms of the health service in 1990 gave a subset of family doctors (GP fundholders) both the ability to choose the hospital where their patients were treated and the means to pay for some services. One of the key factors influencing family doctors' choice of hospital was patient waiting time.

The use of contracts in the management of infectious disease related risk in the NHS internal market.

The paper reports a unique study of contracting for infectious disease control in the English National Health Service internal market. New-institutional economic and socio-legal theories are used to predict that it will not be possible to make contracts for the control of infectious disease which are complete with respect to either the allocation of financial risk or the specification of quality standards. Socio-legal theory predicts that in some circumstances informal relationships (known as networks or relational contracts) can evolve to compensate for some of the deficiencies of incomplete contracts.