Service provision and utilisation in German paediatric primary care practices during public health crises: Protocol of the mixed-methods COVID-19 PedCare Study.

Introduction: Public health crises such as pandemics can cause serious disruptions to the utilisation and provision of healthcare services with negative effects on morbidity and mortality. Despite the important role of paediatric primary care in maintaining high-quality healthcare services during crises, evidence about service utilisation and provision remains limited especially in Germany. This study, therefore, explores the utilisation and provision of paediatric primary care services during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and their barriers and facilitators.

Expanding the role of non-physician medical staff in primary care in Germany: protocol for a mixed-methods study exploring the perspectives of physicians in rural practices.

Introduction: Primary care faces substantial challenges worldwide through an increasing mismatch in supply and demand, particularly in rural areas. One option to address this mismatch might be increasing efficiency by delegation of tasks to non-physician medical staff. Possible influencing factors, motives and beliefs regarding delegation to non-physician medical staff and the potential of an expanded role, as perceived by primary care physicians, however, remain unclear.

Estimating the potential reduction in future sickness absence from optimizing group-level psychosocial work characteristics: a prospective, multicenter cohort study in German industrial settings.

Background: Absence from work due to sickness impairs organizational productivity and performance. Even in organizations with perfect work conditions, some inevitable baseline sickness absence exists amongst working populations. The excess sickness absence observed above this baseline rate has become the focus of traditional health promotion efforts, addressing preventable physical illness, health behavior and mental health at the personal level.

Economic evaluations of system-based obesity interventions - the case for a new approach.

System-based interventions are of increasing interest as they seek to modify environments (e.g. socio-cultural system, transport system or policy system) that promote development of conditions such as obesity and its related risk factors.

Under regional characteristics of rural China: a clearer view on the performance of the New Rural Cooperative Medical Scheme.

The New Cooperative Medical Scheme (NCMS) was implemented in 2003 in response to the poor state of health care in rural China. Considering the substantial differences in regional socioeconomics, preferences for health care needs, and concurrent implementation of other health-related policies, the extent to which the impact of the NCMS differs in rural communities across China is unclear. The objective of this paper, therefore, was to explore the variation in the determinants of household enrolment and the impact of enrolment on health care utilization and medical expenditures in three large geographic regions in China.