Among the many roles a government plays in our daily lives, protecting the public's health is one of the most conspicuous. The government provides goods and services such as registration of births and deaths, public health surveillance of disease and injury, outbreak investigations, research and education, health insurance for the poor and elderly, enforcement of laws and regulations, evaluation of health promotion programs, and assurance of a competent healthy workforce. In the past, economics in public health has almost exclusively focused on efficiency of programs through the use of cost-effectiveness or net present value measures clustered under the rubric of "economic evaluation." Efficiency measures are useful at the programmatic level. However, lack of full employment and market failures including public goods and the impact of consumers and producers actions not reflected in the markets (externalities) not only compromise efficiency but also generate health inequities. We propose an expansion of the scope of existing health economics research in an area characterized as public health economics--the study of the economic role of government in public health, particularly, but not exclusively, in supplying public goods and addressing externalities.

Download full-text PDF

Source
http://dx.doi.org/10.1097/00124784-200703000-00024DOI Listing

Publication Analysis

Top Keywords

public health
20
public goods
12
health
10
public
8
health economics
8
health exclusively
8
goods externalities
4
externalities agenda
4
agenda public
4
economics roles
4

Similar Publications

Stimulant-involved overdose deaths: Constructing dynamic hypotheses.

Int J Drug Policy

January 2025

MGH Institute for Technology Assessment, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, 02144, USA. Electronic address:

The overdose epidemic in the United States is evolving, with a rise in stimulant (cocaine and/or methamphetamine)-only and opioid and stimulant-involved overdose deaths for reasons that remain unclear. We conducted interviews and group model building workshops in Massachusetts and South Dakota. Building on these data and extant research, we identified six dynamic hypotheses, explaining changes in stimulant-involved overdose trends, visualized using causal loop diagrams.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Influenza accounts for 30% of the total morbidity and mortality in the European Union. However, the specific burden in different European countries is largely unknown, and more research is needed to ascertain the reality of this disease. In this retrospective study, we analyzed the burdens of hospitalization, intensive care unit (ICU) admission and in-hospital mortality in Spain over five seasons (2015-2020) via publicly available Minimum Basic Datasets (MDBS).

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

In this work, we investigate the dynamics of a discrete-time prey-predator model considering a prey reproductive response as a function of the predation risk, with the prey population growth factor governed by two parameters. The system can evolve toward scenarios of mutual or only of predators extinction, or species coexistence. We analytically show all different types of equilibrium points depending on the ranges of growth parameters.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Effects of Noise and Public Setting on Blood Pressure Readings : A Randomized Crossover Trial.

Ann Intern Med

January 2025

Department of Epidemiology and Welch Center for Prevention, Epidemiology, and Clinical Research, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore; and Department of Pediatrics, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland (T.M.B.).

Background: Guidelines emphasize quiet settings for blood pressure (BP) measurement.

Objective: To determine the effect of noise and public environment on BP readings.

Design: Randomized crossover trial of adults in Baltimore, Maryland.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Want AI Summaries of new PubMed Abstracts delivered to your In-box?

Enter search terms and have AI summaries delivered each week - change queries or unsubscribe any time!