Does the World Bank have any impact on human development of the poorest countries? Some preliminary evidence from Africa

In an attempt to better understand the impact of the World Bank on human development in poor countries, we use cross-country data on African countries for the 1990–2002 period to examine this relationship. The coefficient estimates of our parsimonious fixed-effects models indicate that while loans and grants of the Bank have had a positive impact on some relatively short-term indicators of health and education in an average African country, there is little evidence to suggest that such loans and grants have helped these countries to consolidate on the short-term gains.     

COMPETITION AND SAFETY IN UK LOCAL AUTHORITIES. An empirical study

A number of studies throughout the late 1980s and early 1990s were able to highlight economic gains from the policy of Compulsory Competitive Tendering (CCT) in the UK. Claims have been made that this economic gain was achieved by financial savings brought about by deterioration in the terms and conditions of employees. Far less is known about the impact of CCT on the occupational health and safety of direct and subcontracted employees engaged in public service provision. Much of the literature which does exist on the impact on occupational health and safety of privatization generally, asserts that its effect has been negative. This article addresses the question of the impact of CCT on occupational health and safety on the basis of triangulation of three methodological approaches. Although the current UK government has abandoned the CCT process, it has replaced it with a policy of ‘Best Value’, a policy which will apply to all local authority services. Best Value does not contain the same element of compulsion, but it is likely that many of the organizational and commercial pressures introduced by CCT will continue. Against that back-drop, it is concluded that CCT may have exposed pre-existing deficiencies in local authority health and safetysystems. Strategies have been developed to address many of these deficiencies in CCT services. Services previously not subject to CCT will now be required to address these problems and solutions as a consequence of the Best Value regime.     

高校轮滑教学对学生身体机能培养的实验研究

轮滑运动以其时尚的魅力和独特的健身价值,在高校新兴体育课程中深受广大学生的青睐。文章采用文献检索法、实验测定法、数理统计法等方式,以陕西科技大学2008级参加轮滑选项课程的学生为研究对象,探讨轮滑课程教学会对学生身体机能产生哪些影响,为高校轮滑课程发展提供理论参考。     

Home safety,accessibility, and elderly health: Evidence from falls

This article presents estimates of the impact of home safety and accessibility features on the prevention of serious, non-fatal falls for elderly widowed individuals. As these features are not randomly assigned across homes, we develop an instrumental variable (IV) strategy that relies on the differential decline in the health and functional status of spouses to identify impacts. Specifically, we use the deceased spouse’s functional status when alive, as measured by limits to Activities of Daily Living (ADLs), as an IV for the presence of home safety and accessibility features for the surviving spouse in the years after widowhood, and then estimate the effect of these features on the likelihood of a serious fall for the widow using rich longitudinal data from the Health and Retirement Study. The presence of such features reduces the likelihood of a fall requiring medical treatment by 20 percentage points, a substantial effect. However, falls are not the type of health shock that is a main driver of housing tenure transitions among the elderly. Although somewhat speculative, cost–benefit estimates suggest that investments in home safety for the elderly may generate in the short run as much as a dollar-for-dollar reduction in medical expenditures.     

Effect of Certificate of Need Law on the intensity of competition: The market for emergency care

PurposeThis article aims to contribute to the academic literature in better understanding the impact of Certificate of Need (CON) Law on Emergency Department (ED) care. Impact of CON Law on ED competition remains an unanswered empirical question.MethodsWe examine the impact of CON Law and its stringency on the intensity of competition (rivalry among competitors) between EDs measured by the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI). We then estimate the effects of CON Law on HHI by treating CON as an exogenous (endogenous) variable.FindingsOn average the CON legislation enhances ED competition. A possible reason is that the law hinders predatory behavior, and therefore acts as an effective anti-trust tool. Other findings indicate that competition is found to be positively related to a state's population size and median income and negatively related with the prevalence of employer provided insurance and magnitude of illegal immigration in a state.Practical implicationsThis article sheds some light on how political regulations could affect healthcare market and hence may provide public policy makers some insights on reducing healthcare cost.OriginalityOur analysis of the impact of CON regulation on ED competition significantly contributes to the healthcare and strategy literature. The law potentially serves as an anti-trust tool in the hands of the government. We extend the empirical literature by treating CON Law and its stringency as exogenous (endogenous). Our comprehensive analysis considers a host of control variables such as population demographics, their health status and access to health care, healthcare facilities, political environment, in addition to the CON features.     

Gender equality and economic complexity

This study is the first attempt to examine the influence of gender equality on economic complexity. Specifically, we investigate the effects of four aspects (employment, health, education, rights) of gender equality with 20 variables in an economic complexity index. To deal with potential endogeneity, we used the two-step system–generalized method of moments approach with an unbalanced panel of data on 119 economies from 1991 to 2017. First, labor participation in industry or service sectors as well as wage and salaried employment by women appears to improve economic complexity, while women’s employment in agriculture, contributions to family workers, self-employment, and vulnerable employment have a negative impact. Second, better health conditions for women increase economic complexity. Third, gender equality in education has a positive impact on economic complexity. Fourth, the empowerment of women in terms of socioeconomic-political rights is a positive factor for economic complexity. Overall, gender equality has great benefits for economic complexity.     

Anticipating special events in Emergency Department forecasting

Accurate daily forecast of Emergency Department (ED) attendance helps roster planners in allocating available resources more effectively and potentially influences staffing. Since special events affect human behaviours, they may increase or decrease the demand for ED services. Therefore, it is crucial to model their impact and use them to forecast future attendance to improve roster planning and avoid reactive strategies. In this paper, we propose, for the first time, a forecasting model to generate both point and probabilistic daily forecast of ED attendance. We model the impact of special events on ED attendance by considering real-life ED data. We benchmark the accuracy of our model against three time-series techniques and a regression model that does not consider special events. We show that the proposed model outperforms its benchmarks across all horizons for both point and probabilistic forecasts. Results also show that our model is more robust with an increasing forecasting horizon. Moreover, we provide evidence on how different types of special events may increase or decrease ED attendance. Our model can easily be adapted for use not only by EDs but also by other health services. It could also be generalised to include more types of special events.     

An analysis of the thematic evolution of ageing and healthcare expenditure using word embedding: A scoping review of policy implications

Thanks to the advances in public health and medical sciences, the increasing of elderly has become a structural phenomenon in Europe and the rest of the World. This demographic age shift highlighted severe doubts about the sustainability of healthcare systems which see adult people as a burden rather than, if they are healthy and active, as an advantage for a country’s economic development. Safeguarding older people from infections is crucial, but supporting them during health emergencies is even more critical. Older adults, for example, became more at risk of death during the COVID-19 pandemic. Thus, the balance previously achieved between age-related diseases and healthy quality of life went under higher pressure. As a result, the potential impact of ageing on healthcare expenditure is increasingly debated. Starting from this background, we propose a bibliometric study based on word embedding techniques to identify the drivers that could influence this relationship and track their evolution in the health policy debate. The main findings of our research underline that given the upward impact on the growth in health spending due to population ageing, policies oriented to improve their access to health services through new technologies could better meet the elderly needs, moderating the cost growth. Protecting the health of older adults represents, in fact, a challenge for governments as well as proof of the quality of health systems management, especially during severe outbreaks such as the one caused by the coronavirus.     

WHAT EXPLAINS THE DIFFERENCE IN THE EFFECT OF RETIREMENT ON HEALTH? EVIDENCE FROM GLOBAL AGING DATA

This paper analyzes the reasons for differences in the estimated effect of retirement on health in previous studies. We investigate these differences by focusing on the analysis methods used by these studies. Using various health indexes, numerous researchers have examined the effects of retirement on health. However, there are no unified views on the impact of retirement on various health indexes. Consequently, we show that the choice of analysis method is one of the key factors in explaining why the estimated results of the effect of retirement on health differ. Moreover, we re‐estimate the effect of retirement on health by using a fixed analysis method controlling for individual heterogeneity and endogeneity of the retirement behavior. We analyze the effect of retirement on health parameters, such as cognitive function, self‐report of health, activities of daily living (ADL), depression, and body mass index in eight countries. We find that the effects of retirement on self‐report of health, depression, and ADL are positive in many of these countries.     

HOW TO MEASURE THE ECONOMIC IMPACT OF VECTOR‐BORNE DISEASES AT COUNTRY LEVEL

Vector‐borne diseases (VBDs) are widespread in less developed countries and reemerging in developed ones. Available economic studies agree that VBDs have significant effects on countries' economic outcomes, and affirm that a systematic evaluation of such effects is crucial for the efficient allocation of resources to health‐related priorities. This paper provides a comparative assessment of available methodologies for measuring the economic impact of VBDs at national level. We review both macroeconometric and micro‐based approaches, and examine advantages and disadvantages of current methods. We conclude by suggesting possible areas for future research.     

Health sector reform and human resource management: Britain in comparative perspective

This article examines the impact of health service restructuring for employment practices in Europe, using Britain as the basis of comparison. It first considers trends in West European health care reform and examines the extent to which reform measures have been accompanied by changes in employment practices. It focuses on reforms of pay determination arrangements and work organization, examining in particular the experience of nurses, who form the largest occupational group. Finally, some of the implications for a future research agenda are considered. It concludes that research on health sector employment practices is under-developed and outlines a research agenda that recognizes the importance of workplace restructuring within a comparative framework.     

A DEA evaluation of the successful implementation of HEALTH2020 policies

Health2020 is a promising framework of policies provided by World Health Organization (WHO) aiming to diminish the health and well-being inequalities among the citizens of countries. European Union (EU) and its member-states participate to this ambitious framework. The deterioration of major demographic, social and environmental factors, in addition to the escalation of the economic crisis prevent the successful and, without restrictions, implementation of this framework. Under such conditions, there is a strong need for all the EU member-states to utilize their health and economical resources efficiently and wisely. In order to provide a unified and value-based approach of the Heath2020 framework, we take advantage of the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) and Dynamic DEA methods to evaluate the impact of the Health2020 policies. This approach pinpoints the countries that can be characterized as outperformers and the lagged ones. We adopt several versions of evaluation, in relation to the regional targets of Health2020, measuring both the effectiveness and the efficiency of EU countries from 2011 to 2016. We, also, examine the stability of the technological frontier of the countries using dynamic DEA. Our results showed the existence of major dividend lines between the outperformers and the other countries. The results also reveal a stability in technological changes indicating, probably, the slow development in this sector at the field of Health.     

Targets,indicators and milestones

Area-based initiatives are a major feature of the new public policy agenda of the Labour government in the UK. They are aimed at key policy goals of combating social exclusion and improving the operation of public services, through the encouragement of partnership and participation. However, the delivery of programmes has been heavily influenced by performance management and the use of targets, indicators and milestones to monitor activity. This is creating contradictory pressures on the managers and practitioners within programmes. These issues are discussed and their impact in one area-based activity (the Health Action Zones) is explored.     

RFID在社区卫生服务药品管理中的应用探讨

社区卫生服务是我国卫生工作的重要组成部分,居民用药的安全性、用药合理性和药价合理性等直接影响社区卫生服务的质量,药品的管理是关键因素。结合RFID的特点和功能,分析和探讨其在社区卫生服务药品管理中的应用,探索药品管理的科学性和合理性,并且分析影响RFID在社区卫生服务药品管理应用中的主要因素。为我国社区卫生服务的药品管理积极探索出路。     

Patient and Public Participation in the English NHS: An assessment of experimental implementation processes

This article analyses the impact of the implementation of a set of policies introduced after 1997 in the English National Health Service aimed at increasing patient and public involvement in organizational decision-making processes. Adopting the ambiguity/conflict policy implementation model and based on a year-long research project, it shows that patient and public engagement can be more effectively achieved when there is room for interpretation and discretion in selecting the means for involvement. Local initiatives, based on effective leadership governance mechanisms and organizational learning processes, are more likely to generate inclusiveness, shared ownership, and user-centredness than a top-down framework for involvement.     

The problem with pay flexibility: changing pay practices in the UK health sector

This paper critically assesses models and policies of pay flexibility as applied to the public sector. Examination of the arguments for greater pay flexibility across three dimensions - external labour market flexibility, organizational flexibility, and macroeconomic flexibility - reveals a number of weaknesses, rooted in a failure to problematize the conflicting motives for greater pay flexibility in the context of pressures internal and external to the organization. An alternative 'model' of changing pay systems is developed and applied to the case of the UK health sector where there have been attempts to introduce various forms of flexible local pay arrangements. Drawing on interviews conducted during the mid-1990s with personnel and HRM managers at fifteen NHS Trusts, a number of issues are examined, such as: the impact of differential external labour market conditions of workers on the development of strategies designed to tie local pay to improved performance; the introduction of performance-related pay as a means to institutionalize wider earnings differentials within the organization; and the potential conflict between pressures to link local pay structures with local labour market conditions, on the one hand, and customary employee-held norms that link pay to occupational skills and professional status, on the other.     

Conflict and well-being of civilians: The case of the Russian-Ukrainian hybrid war

This paper investigates the contemporaneous effect of conflict on civilians living outside of the conflict zone. Applying a multi-dimensional concept of well-being, it uses two large household surveys over 2012–2016 to analyze how the Russian-Ukrainian hybrid war affected the financial well-being and health of people in both countries. We find that the conflict significantly worsened financial well-being in both countries. The impact mostly operates by worsening expectations about financial well-being and is inversely related to the distance from the conflict zone. Our analysis indicates an increase in chronic diseases in Ukraine over a longer period. Mental health is negatively impacted in both countries at the earlier stages of the conflict. However, in Russia this effect is significant only in the region bordering the conflict zone, while in Ukraine it is significant in regions farther away from the conflict zone.     

The social and private micro-level consequences of homeownership

This paper reviews the literature that describes the micro-level economic and social consequences of homeownership. We adopt an interdisciplinary approach and include studies from economics, sociology, geography, political science, psychology, and other disciplines. Our focus is on the set of consequences of homeownership in developed countries. Our list of potential outcomes of homeownership includes the impact on household wealth and portfolio choice, mobility, labor force participation, urban structure and segregation, home maintenance, political and social activities, health, demographics, self-esteem, and child outcomes. There is substantial evidence that homeownership has important effects on some household behaviors and outcomes. However, we find that much of the past 30-year's literature on consequences of homeowning is deficient from a theoretical or econometric perspective. We suggest solutions and identify research gaps present in the literature.     

Empirical research on smart city construction and public health under information and communications technology

Big data and the internet of things in smart cities play an increasingly important role in the health of urban residents. However, few studies have collected empirical evidence to determine whether the implementation of smart cities can have a positive impact on healthcare. Using three years of panel data from the CHARLS national baseline survey, we examined whether and how smart city construction affects the health status of residents. The results show that the construction of smart cities improves residents’ health status. This relationship is achieved by reducing the use of outpatient services and increasing the utilization of inpatient services. Furthermore, compared with urban residents, rural residents show more significant behavioural changes in their use of medical services under the influence of smart city construction.     

Hospital efficiency and equity in health care delivery: A study based in China

Hospital efficiency and equity in health care delivery are two enduring research topics. Yet little research has been done to examine the relationship between them. This paper studies the impact of hospital efficiency on equity in health care delivery based on a proprietary dataset of hospital characteristics and 630,000 inpatient records from 149 public hospitals in a representative Chinese city. To measure the hospitals' efficiencies, this study takes the hospitals' operational features and case-mix indexes into account, and computes the efficiency levels using data envelopment analysis with bootstrapping. Through regressions that control for a variety of the patients’ personal characteristics (e.g., age, disease, residence, hospital visit frequency), this study shows that the gap between hospitalization expenses of urban and rural inpatients in more efficient hospitals is smaller than those in less efficient hospitals. Thus efficiency enhances equity in expenditure between urban and rural patients. But the dwindling urban-rural gap in expenditure is achieved by raising the spending of rural patients, thereby undermining their access to health care. This pattern is more conspicuous in large and sophisticated high-tier hospitals. Further analysis shows that hospital efficiency impacts equity of health care delivery by inducing different lengths of stay and uncovered parts of total expenditure for urban and rural groups. The findings imply that an efficiency-oriented health care policy may lead to social benefit loss.