Background: Throughout Wales and the world, health inequality remains a problem that is interconnected with a wider and complex social, economic and environmental dynamic. Subsequently, action to tackle inequality in health needs to take place at a structural level, acknowledging the constraints affecting an individual's (or community's) capability and opportunity to enable change. While the 'social determinants of health' is an established concept, fully understanding the composition of the health gap is dependent on capturing the relative contributions of a myriad of social, economic and environmental factors within a quantitative analysis.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: There is a growing recognition of the need to effectively assess the social value of public health interventions through a wider, comprehensive approach, capturing their social, economic and environmental benefits, outcomes and impacts. Social Return on Investment (SROI) is a methodological approach which incorporates all three aspects for evaluating interventions. Mental health problems are one of the leading causes of ill health and disability worldwide.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Forty years from the seminal work of Welsh GP Julian Tudor Hart on the Inverse Care Law, inequalities in health and healthcare remain deeply embedded in Wales. There is a wider gap (over 17 years) in healthy life expectancy between people living in the most and least deprived neighborhoods in Wales. This health inequality is reflected in additional healthcare use.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Non-communicable diseases (NCDs) account for some 90% of premature UK deaths, most being preventable. However, the systems driving NCDs are complex. This complexity can make NCD prevention strategies difficult to develop and implement.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Epidemiol Community Health
August 2017
Background: Public sector austerity measures in many high-income countries mean that public health budgets are reducing year on year. To help inform the potential impact of these proposed disinvestments in public health, we set out to determine the return on investment (ROI) from a range of existing public health interventions.
Methods: We conducted systematic searches on all relevant databases (including MEDLINE; EMBASE; CINAHL; AMED; PubMed, Cochrane and Scopus) to identify studies that calculated a ROI or cost-benefit ratio (CBR) for public health interventions in high-income countries.
Background And Objectives: Gifts to physicians from the pharmaceutical industry are receiving increased scrutiny, but no previous research has evaluated the effect of such gifts on trust. The goal of this study is to determine patient awareness of interactions between physicians and the pharmaceutical industry and to learn whether those interactions impact trust and the doctor-patient relationship.
Methods: A cross-sectional, self-administered 61-item survey was administered in five outpatient clinic waiting rooms at a US medical center in 2008.