Bringing the Social Sciences to Health Policy: An Appreciation of David Mechanic.

David Mechanic has been a pioneering leader in the social and behavioral sciences of health, health services, and health and mental health policy for more than fifty years. One of David's most distinctive qualities has been his vision in identifying trends and defining new research areas and perspectives in health care policy. His early work on how methods of physician payment by capitation and fee-for-service in England and the United States affected physicians' responses to patients and patient care addressed present challenges and many ongoing studies of payment mechanisms.

Examining critical health policy issues within and beyond the clinical encounter: patient-provider relationships and help-seeking behaviors.

Among notable issues in health care policy and practice over the past 50 years have been those centered on the changing dynamics in clinical encounters, predominantly the relationship between physicians and patients and access to health care. Patient roles have become more active, diverse, long-term, and risk-based, while patient-provider relationships are multifaceted, less paternalistic, and more pivotal to health outcomes. Extensive literatures on help-seeking show how much social influences affect both undertreatment and inappropriate high utilization of health care.

Interventions to improve medication adherence in schizophrenia.

Objective: Although nonadherence with the antipsychotic medication regimen is a common barrier to the effective treatment for schizophrenia, knowledge is limited about how to improve medication adherence. This systematic literature review examined psychosocial interventions for improving medication adherence, focusing on promising initiatives, reasonable standards for conducting research in this area, and implications for clinical practice.

Method: Studies were identified by computerized searches of MEDLINE and PsychLIT for the years between 1980 and 2000 and by manual searches of relevant bibliographies and conference proceedings.