The Philippine Universal Health Care (UHC) law enacted in 2019 aimed to address entrenched health system challenges to achieving equitable access to quality health care. This commentary discusses the progress in its implementation to meet its objectives. Some of these health system challenges include overlapping financing roles; weak incentives for integrating health services across local government units (LGUs), the inclusion of the private sector in networks of care, and fragmented primary health care services. The UHC law introduced reforms to transform the Philippine Health Insurance Corporation (PhilHealth) into a strategic purchaser of health services, expand population coverage, and prioritize comprehensive outpatient and primary care services. Furthermore, the law mandated bolstering subnational health financing through a Special Health Fund (SHF) intended to encourage LGUs to integrate into provincial or city health systems. Pilots of the SHF highlighted opportunities and challenges in pooling, prioritizing, and redistributing resources if local health systems are capacitated. Despite facing implementation challenges, including changing priorities, politics, and lack of resources, the Philippines' experience emphasizes the importance of adaptive leadership, sustained commitment, and effective stakeholder engagement to ensure that these health financing reforms remain objective-oriented. Maximizing the UHC law's potential going forward requires addressing ongoing challenges: sustained resource generation, ensuring effective coverage of the poor, and capacitating local health systems. The journey of the Philippines toward UHC offers valuable insights for global health reformers, underscoring the need for adaptive approaches and active political engagement to sustain and achieve progress toward universal and equitable health care access.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/23288604.2024.2397829 | DOI Listing |
Ultrasonics
January 2025
Department of Robotics and Mechatronics, AGH University of Krakow, 30-059 Krakow, Poland. Electronic address:
Ultrasound shear wave elastography (SWE) is widely used in clinical applications for non-invasive measurements of soft tissue viscoelasticity. The study of tissue viscoelasticity often involves the analysis of shear wave phase velocity dispersion curves, which show how the phase velocity varies with frequency or wavelength. In this study, we propose an alternative method to the two-dimensional Fourier transform (2D-FT) and Phase Gradient (PG) methods for shear wave phase velocity estimation.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMedwave
January 2025
Escuela de Medicina, Facultad de Ciencias Médicas, Universidad de Santiago de Chile, Santiago, Chile.
This analysis article aimed to identify and analyze all articles published on the post-COVID-19 condition in Latin America and the Caribbean, focusing on epidemiology, clinical characteristics, and risk of bias. We did a systematic survey of the literature with broad inclusion criteria. The only exclusion criteria were articles referring to post-acute COVID-19 sequelae after an intensive care unit stay, which we distinguish from the post-COVID-19 condition.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFOphthalmic Plast Reconstr Surg
January 2025
Department of Ophthalmology, Columbia University Medical Center, New York, New York.
Purpose: To report the experience with an alternative to the upper eyelid pentagonal wedge resection technique which results in improved cosmesis due to a greater alignment of incisions with relaxed skin tension lines.
Methods: A retrospective review of all patients who underwent the T-shaped wedge resection by the authors from 2009 to 2017. A horizontal eyelid crease incision is made across the upper eyelid skin.
STAR Protoc
January 2025
Department of Molecular and Cellular Medicine, Institute of Medical Science, Tokyo Medical University, Tokyo, Japan. Electronic address:
Extracellular vesicles (EVs) play a key role in cancer development and cellular homeostasis by transferring the biological cargo to recipient cells. Here, we describe steps for screening EV secretion-related genes by combining a microRNA (miRNA) library and ExoScreen, a highly sensitive EV detection technique. We also detail procedures for screening the direct target genes regulated by miRNAs.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCell Rep
January 2025
Department of Genetics, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, Memphis, TN 38105, USA; Department of Anatomy and Neurobiology, College of Graduate Health Sciences, University of Tennessee Health Science Center, Memphis, TN 38163, USA. Electronic address:
Neuraminidase 1 (NEU1) cleaves terminal sialic acids from sialoglycoproteins in endolysosomes and at the plasma membrane. As such, NEU1 regulates immune cells, primarily those of the monocytic lineage. Here, we examine how Neu1 influences microglia by modulating the sialylation of full-length Trem2 (Trem2-FL), a multifunctional receptor that regulates microglial survival, phagocytosis, and cytokine production.
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