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AbstractA growing recognition that customers are important health partners has created the need for collaborative systems of accountability in behavioral health services.

We examine causal links between energy consumption and health indicators (Mortality rate under-5, life expectancy, greenhouse effect, and government expenditure per capita) for a sample of 16 African countries over the period 1971-2010 (according to availability of countries' data). We use the panel-data approach of Kónya (2006), which is based on SUR systems and Wald tests with country specific bootstrap critical values. Our results show that health and energy consumption are strongly linked in Africa. Unilateral causality is found from energy consumption to life expectancy and child under-5 mortality for Senegal, Morocco, Benin, DRC, Algeria, Egypt, and South Africa. At the same time, we found a bilateral causality between energy consumption and health indicators in Nigeria. In particular, our findings suggest that electricity consumption Granger causes health outcomes for several African countries.

The study examines the long run relationship between public health expenditure and under-five mortality rate in 15 West African countries over the period of 1991-2015 with the use of panel fully modified least square (FMOLS). The empirical analysis is made up of both aggregate and disaggregated model. Based on the findings, long run relationship between per capita health expenditure and under-five mortality rate is confirmed. Further evidence indicates that public health expenditure has a significant impact on the rate of under-five mortality. Thus, it is revealed that an increase in health expenditure among West African countries would lead to a drastic reduction in infant mortality rate in the region. Furthermore, it is asserted that institutional quality, female literacy rate and immunization are central for reducing under-five mortality rate in the region. Hence, it is suggested that the quality of institutions, female literacy rate and immunizations which are often neglected in the literature should be accorded considerable priority in policy formulations. Also, governments of West African countries should increase the rate of health expenditure in their respective countries.

Health outcomes research typically uses cost-effectiveness or cost-utility analysis. These approaches take a narrow perspective of the individual effects, typically from the payer or the provider point-of-view. However, using these narrow perspectives misses macro-level, or societal level, benefits and costs that could significantly alter whether an intervention is considered beneficial or cost-effective. The societal perspective accounts for all the effects impacting patients, their families, the public, and government expenditures for a healthcare intervention. Such a perspective is vital for healthcare interventions for illnesses where morbidity and long absences from work are probable. A cost-benefit analysis would account for all the societal benefits and costs, allowing policy-makers to observe an outcomes analysis more closely reflective of the real impacts. This paper clearly presents why a societal perspective using cost-benefit analysis should be the preferred method of health outcomes research. An example of breast cancer interventions is used to illustrate this point.

AbstractA growing literature shows that income volatility has negative effects on household well‐being. Using the Survey of Income and Program Participation, we use temporal ordering to investigate the relationship between monthly household income volatility and the subsequent change in self‐reported health status of the household head. For liquidity constrained households, a one standard deviation increase in volatility over 24 months leads to a 1.3%–4.3% increase in the probability of worsened health. The magnitude of this effect is approximately two‐thirds that of the impact of a one standard deviation change in the level of mean household income.

Healthy people is the precious asset of a nation as healthy workforce act as an active agent of growth and help the nation in achieving its economic and social goals at global level. Assuming the importance of a good health, a good amount of health investment is desirable. Moreover, India is a home to the largest poor population which cannot meet its own basic needs of lives as health, education, housing, drinking water, and sanitation etc. These are the basic facilities to live and enjoying them is the fundamental right of the people, therefore government need to make arrangements for the assured provision of these basic facilities. With this regard government of India is making investment in social development of the country through various channels. The present paper is an attempt to assess the health investment and specifically to analyze its effect on the health status of India. In this perspective, the present study focused to analyze the relationship of health investment in terms of per capita health expenditure and health outcomes with respect to health indicators of Crude Birth Rate, Crude Death Rate, Infant Mortality Rate and Total Fertility Rate of India, from the period of 2000-01 to 2014-15. The findings of the study concluded that public health spending significantly affect the health indictors in a positive way and helped government in achieving its health goals.

This study examined the relationship among health expenditure, health outcomes and economic growth in Nigeria for the period between 1981 and 2017. This study adopted the Toda-Yamamoto causality framework to examine these relationships. The Augmented Dickey Fuller unit root test was used to check for maximum order of integration of the variables used in the study and the result was one while the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) Bounds test approach to cointegration was used to investigate if a long-run relationship exists among the macroeconomic variables used in the study and the result was in the affirmative. The results of the Toda-Yamamoto causality tests showed a unidirectional causality running from health expenditure to infant mortality while there is no causality between real GDP and infant mortality; a unidirectional causal relationship running from health expenditure and real GDP to life expectancy and maternal mortality; and a unidirectional causal relationship running from real GDP to health expenditure. This study therefore recommended that the Nigerian government should make concerted efforts geared towards increasing the health expenditure at least to meet up with the WHO's recommendation that all countries should allocate at least 13 per cent of their annual budget to the health sector for effective funding as this would bring desired health outcomes and employ the use of modern technology and the services of professional health personnel should be sought to combat the high incidence of maternal and infant mortality in the health sector in Nigeria.

Decentralisation is a common strategy for improving the performance of health systems. In developing countries, empirical evidence has shown that decentralisation has an overall positive effect on health-care provision. However, this effect depended on the local context in each locality. Indeed, the heterogeneity of local contexts may jeopardise the effect of decentralisation on equity in health outcomes across municipalities. This dissertation contributes to our understanding of the effect of decentralisation on equity of health outcomes across municipalities. The case of Colombian healthcare fiscal decentralisation was analysed. Colombia is an interesting case study, as health financing there has become decentralised since 1993. Infant mortality rates and vaccination coverage were used as health outcomes and health financing resources were used as a main proxy of decentralisation. Standard econometric and spatial econometric techniques were used. The results suggest that fiscal decentralisation has not tackled the differences in health outcomes across Colombian municipalities. Overall, fiscal decentralisation had a positive effect on health outcomes. However, the results were highly dependent on socio-economic conditions at the municipal level. The benefits of fiscal decentralisation were greater in well-off municipalities than in the poorest. Therefore, even when municipal governments know the needs of their localities, the level of local development could be a key condition for achieving better health outcomes and reducing inequalities across municipalities. ; (ESP 3) -- UCL, 2013

Decentralisation is a common strategy for improving the performance of health systems. In developing countries, empirical evidence has shown that decentralisation has an overall positive effect on health-care provision. However, this effect depended on the local context in each locality. Indeed, the heterogeneity of local contexts may jeopardise the effect of decentralisation on equity in health outcomes across municipalities. This dissertation contributes to our understanding of the effect of decentralisation on equity of health outcomes across municipalities. The case of Colombian healthcare fiscal decentralisation was analysed. Colombia is an interesting case study, as health financing there has become decentralised since 1993. Infant mortality rates and vaccination coverage were used as health outcomes and health financing resources were used as a main proxy of decentralisation. Standard econometric and spatial econometric techniques were used. The results suggest that fiscal decentralisation has not tackled the differences in health outcomes across Colombian municipalities. Overall, fiscal decentralisation had a positive effect on health outcomes. However, the results were highly dependent on socio-economic conditions at the municipal level. The benefits of fiscal decentralisation were greater in well-off municipalities than in the poorest. Therefore, even when municipal governments know the needs of their localities, the level of local development could be a key condition for achieving better health outcomes and reducing inequalities across municipalities. ; (ESP 3) -- UCL, 2013