The effect of user fee exemption on the utilization of maternal health care at mission health facilities in Malawi.

The Government of Malawi has signed contracts called service level agreements (SLAs) with mission health facilities in order to exempt their catchment populations from paying user fees. Government in turn reimburses the facilities for the services that they provide. SLAs started in 2006 with 28 out of 165 mission health facilities and increased to 74 in 2015.

Benefits of Incentives for Breastfeeding and Smoking cessation in pregnancy (BIBS): a mixed-methods study to inform trial design.

Background: Smoking in pregnancy and/or not breastfeeding have considerable negative health outcomes for mother and baby.

Aim: To understand incentive mechanisms of action for smoking cessation in pregnancy and breastfeeding, develop a taxonomy and identify promising, acceptable and feasible interventions to inform trial design.

Design: Evidence syntheses, primary qualitative survey, and discrete choice experiment (DCE) research using multidisciplinary, mixed methods.

Unintended consequences of incentive provision for behaviour change and maintenance around childbirth.

Financial (positive or negative) and non-financial incentives or rewards are increasingly used in attempts to influence health behaviours. While unintended consequences of incentive provision are discussed in the literature, evidence syntheses did not identify any primary research with the aim of investigating unintended consequences of incentive interventions for lifestyle behaviour change. Our objective was to investigate perceived positive and negative unintended consequences of incentive provision for a shortlist of seven promising incentive strategies for smoking cessation in pregnancy and breastfeeding.

Active travel intervention and physical activity behaviour: an evaluation.

A physically active lifestyle is an important contributor to individual health and well-being. The evidence linking higher physical activity levels with better levels of morbidity and mortality is well understood. Despite this, physical inactivity remains a major global risk factor for mortality and, consequently, encouraging individuals to pursue physically active lifestyles has been an integral part of public health policy in many countries.

The tougher the better: an economic analysis of increased payment thresholds on the performance of general practices.

We investigate whether and how a change in performance-related payment motivated General Practitioners (GPs) in Scotland. We evaluate the effect of increases in the performance thresholds required for maximum payment under the Quality and Outcomes Framework in April 2006. A difference-in-differences estimator with fixed effects was employed to examine the number of patients treated under clinical indicators whose payment schedules were revised and to compare these with the figures for those indicators whose schedules remained unchanged.

Tackling alcohol misuse: purchasing patterns affected by minimum pricing for alcohol.

Background: Alcohol consumption is associated with a range of health and social harms that increase with the level of consumption. Policy makers are interested in effective and cost-effective interventions to reduce alcohol consumption and associated harms. Economic theory and research evidence demonstrate that increasing price is effective at the population level.

Has payment by results affected the way that English hospitals provide care? Difference-in-differences analysis.

Objective: To examine whether the introduction of payment by results (a fixed tariff case mix based payment system) was associated with changes in key outcome variables measuring volume, cost, and quality of care between 2003/4 and 2005/6.

Setting: Acute care hospitals in England.

Design: Difference-in-differences analysis (using a control group created from trusts in England and providers in Scotland not implementing payment by results in the relevant years); retrospective analysis of patient level secondary data with fixed effects models.

Activity-based funding for National Health Service hospitals in England: managers' experience and expectations.

Activity-based funding of hospital services has been introduced progressively since 2003 in the National Health Service (NHS) in England, under the name 'Payment by Results' (PbR). It represents a major change from previous funding arrangements based on annual "block" payments for large bundles of services. We interviewed senior local NHS managers about their experience and expectations of the impact of PbR.

Involving the public in NHS service planning.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to report the findings of a study that examined the development of an assessment framework for public involvement.

Design/methodology/approach: The paper has adopted a multi-method approach that includes: a focused review of literature relating to tools that might be used to provide valid and reliable assessments of public involvement; key informant interviews with people with experience from various perspectives of efforts to involve the public in the planning and development of health services; and a detailed study of a specific public involvement initiative involving a range of "stakeholder" interviews.

Findings: The paper finds that there are uncertainty and a lack of consensus about how assessment of public involvement should be undertaken.