Health Affairs

Editor’s Note: This week, senior health policy experts and emerging health care leaders from around the world have gathered in Salzburg, Austria, where the Salzburg Global Seminar, in association with the Nuffield Trust, has convened a health care series titled, “Reforming Health Care: Maintaining Social Solidarity and Quality in the Face of Economic, Health and Social Challenges.” Health Affairs Deputy... Read the rest of this entry »

Editor’s Note: This week, senior health policy experts and emerging health care leaders from around the world have gathered in Salzburg, Austria, to discuss how different health care systems are seeking to control costs and improve care. Health Affairs Deputy Editor Parmeeth Atwal is attending the conference as a Knight Fellow and will provide periodic blog posts on the proceedings.... Read the rest of this entry »

Editor’s Note: Last week Health Affairs published critiques of the health plans put forward by presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain. Health Affairs also published a third paper outlining how the two plans might be blended in a compromise. Here, three of the authors – Wharton economist Mark Pauly, Harvard economist Katherine Swartz, and economist... Read the rest of this entry »

Recent days have brought a flurry of coverage of community-based MRSA outbreaks. Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus has been a problem of long standing in the hospital setting. However, recent outbreaks in schools, and the lack of a clear explanation from officialdom for the up-tick, have clearly given new legs to what health care and public health... Read the rest of this entry »

Editor’s Note: Health Affairs’deputy editor Parmeeth Atwal spoke recently with Ashok Alexander, director of Avahan, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s HIV prevention initiative in India. Health Affairs devoted its current July/August issue to “Global Health Financing” with support from the Gates Foundation. The Numbers Atwal: The World Health Organization (WHO) and Indian health officials... Read the rest of this entry »

Disparities in access to quality health care remain prevalent in the U.S. health care system. So states the National Healthcare Disparities Report (NHDR) to Congress. The NHDR and its companion, the National Healthcare Quality Report (NHQR), both produced by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), have served for years as critical gauges of... Read the rest of this entry »

At a strategic moment when funding remains in limbo as unfinished business from the last Congress, the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) has significant successes to report, says recently appointed Global AIDS Coordinator Mark Dybul, M.D. Ambassador Dybul made his remarks at a January 4 Global Health Council policy forum.

The American Public Health Association (APHA), the oldest and largest organization of the public health community, chose public health and human rights as the theme of its 13,000 attendee-strong 2006 annual meeting, held earlier this month in Boston. The emphasis this year on human rights, according to APHA executive director Georges Benjamin, was driven in... Read the rest of this entry »