Health for all? Pasts, presents and futures of aspirations for universal healthcare

Kehr, Janina; Muinde, Jacinta Victoria S.; Prince, Ruth J.

doi:10.1016/j.socscimed.2023.115660

Cited by 4 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 62 publications

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“…This situation is not at all unique to the Netherlands. New public management measures, state disengagement from healthcare provision and funding, and the active fostering of private endeavours in healthcare funding and delivery have taken place in all European countries during the 2000s (André and Hermann 2009;Maarse 2006;Schmid et al 2010;Kehr, Muinde, and Prince 2023;Eurofound 2011, 5, 11), as well as in the UK (Dowling 2021). One of the most visible indications of the extent of healthcare privatisation in Europe is the growth of a lucrative market for the corporate, for-profit provision of health services (Lethbridge 2013, 14;André and Hermann 2009;Krause and Ezzedine 2023).…”

Section: Context: Public Healthcare In the Netherlandsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…One of the most visible indications of the extent of healthcare privatisation in Europe is the growth of a lucrative market for the corporate, for-profit provision of health services (Lethbridge 2013, 14;André and Hermann 2009;Krause and Ezzedine 2023). This process has affected countries across the European region (Lethbridge 2013;Kehr, Muinde, and Prince 2023). Indeed, several of the practitioners that participated in the presented research complained to me about the ever-growing amount of tech startups that visited hospitals for sales pitches.…”

Section: Context: Public Healthcare In the Netherlandsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Medical Tech Facilitator: An Emerging Position in Dutch Public Healthcare and Their Tinkering Practices

Van Voorst

2024

MAT

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This article focuses on the emerging position of the ‘medical tech facilitator’ developed by practitioners in the Dutch public healthcare system. The analysis is based on anthropological fieldwork conducted in Dutch hospitals. It highlights, firstly, the practices and ongoing negotiations that these facilitators engage in, to maintain a position between two parties—the medical sector and the technology industry. I argue that the practices of medical tech facilitators are not (only) a result of personal, lucrative interests, but should be seen as a pragmatic way of coping, or tinkering, with a healthcare system that is experienced by them as frustrating and inefficient. Secondly, the article reveals the outcomes of these practices for public healthcare. I will pose that this emerging and ambiguous position leads to a co-production of specific health policies—something which is concerning, considering the fact that medical tech facilitators typically lack technological expertise. As such, they both resist and reproduce the problems they experience in their daily work.

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Section: Context: Public Healthcare In the Netherlandsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Context: Public Healthcare In the Netherlandsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Medical Tech Facilitator: An Emerging Position in Dutch Public Healthcare and Their Tinkering Practices

Van Voorst

2024

MAT

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“…The goal of expanding health care capacity in resource-poor countries was eclipsed by massive disruptions associated with Cold War politics and the global debt crisis of the 1970s and 1980s, which occurred amid the state-building efforts of newly independent countries in the Global South. These events intersected to disrupt plans for effectively implementing "health for all" (WHO, 1978), and instead, institutionalized health care as a commodity-rather than a right-gained traction (Kehr et al, 2023). Almost immediately following Alma-Ata, the World Bank implemented "selective primary health care" instead (Walsh & Warren, 1979), prioritizing programming that targeted specific diseases rather than primary health care.…”

Section: Background: Community-based Health Care In Senegalmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sanctified suffering and the common good: Translocal health care provisioning in smalltown Senegal

Burgen,

Marten

2024

Economic Anthropology

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Senegal has long relied on local communities to expand health services and improve health outcomes for citizens and is internationally lauded for its effectiveness in promoting good health and facilitating local trust. Here we examine how community health care emerges in Keur Toma, a rural Wolof town in the Senegal River Valley that relies on a global network of labor migrants to fuel its remittance‐based economy. Largely through its hometown association and the migrant men abroad who fund it, Keur Toma has built and sustained the local health infrastructure and staffing essential to achieving health care accessibility, providing consistent investment and critical stop‐gap funding when government assistance falters. Following Robbins's call for investigating “an anthropology of the good,” we highlight the deeply rooted sense of care and obligation to kin and community that fosters the translocal ties that make Keur Toma's health care possible in the state's absence. We highlight what Ngom calls “sanctified suffering”—which valorizes personal fortitude and the ability to endure hardships for family and community, shaped by traditions of solidarity, mutual aid, and Islamic morality—and its role in migrants' hometown commitments to building stronger communities.

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“…Shifts in health policy making, and the new‐fangled promotion of UHC in particular, are emblematic of such changes in the conceptualization of social policy (Birn et al., 2016; Kehr et al., 2023). While in the 1970s, a fairer distribution of power and resources across the globe was seen as an integral part of efforts to improve people's health, more recent calls for UHC pay less attention to the social determinants of health and emphasize coverage with less focus on how services are provided (Cueto, 2004; Fischer, 2018; Sanders et al., 2019).…”

Section: From Comprehensive Primary Healthcare For All To a Basic Min...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Implementing Health Policy in Nigeria: The Basic Health Care Provision Fund as a Catalyst for Achieving Universal Health Coverage?

Chukwuma

2023

Development and Change

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In 2014, Nigeria adopted a new law for its healthcare system, which mandated the establishment of a novel health‐financing mechanism, the Basic Health Care Provision Fund (BHCPF). The BHCPF was created to provide sustainable funding with a view to fast‐tracking Universal Health Coverage (UHC) and improving health outcomes in Nigeria. This article places Nigeria's UHC reform process in the broader context of social policy implementation in Africa to illustrate the extent to which interactions between different agents, contextual factors such as Nigeria's federal character, as well as changing conceptualizations of social policy at a global level, shape views on how best to implement UHC. The article is based on the careful examination of three different versions of implementation guidelines for the BHCPF combined with qualitative data collected during fieldwork. It argues that there is a discrepancy between the Nigerian government rhetoric of putting into place a system that improves access to healthcare and the actual practice of implementing UHC via the BHCPF. In reality, a range of controversies surround the ongoing operationalization of the BHCPF, contributing to the perpetuation of a social policy environment that allows poor health outcomes and significant health inequities in Nigeria to persist.

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Health for all? Pasts, presents and futures of aspirations for universal healthcare

Cited by 4 publications

References 62 publications

The Medical Tech Facilitator: An Emerging Position in Dutch Public Healthcare and Their Tinkering Practices

The Medical Tech Facilitator: An Emerging Position in Dutch Public Healthcare and Their Tinkering Practices

Sanctified suffering and the common good: Translocal health care provisioning in smalltown Senegal

Implementing Health Policy in Nigeria: The Basic Health Care Provision Fund as a Catalyst for Achieving Universal Health Coverage?

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