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RR 2014/212 Health Care Systems around the World: A Comparative Guide Sarah E. Boslaugh Sage Publications Thousand Oaks, CA 2013 xxix+575 pp. ISBN 978 1 4522 0312 6 £100 $175
Keywords Countries, Guides and handbooks, Health services
Review DOI 10.1108/RR-05-2014-0124
Health Care Systems around the World: A Comparative Guide is a comprehensive reference source describing the organization, distribution, regulation, funding and impact of health care services in 193 countries. Compiler Sarah E. Boslaugh, PhD, MPH, is currently a grant writer and journalist for the Center for Sustainable Journalism at Kennesaw State University and has previously published on the related topics of public health, epidemiology and health statistics.
Boslaugh's theoretical framework is the definition of health from the Preamble to the Constitution of the World Health Organization (WHO) (1946) and United Nations General Assembly's Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948); she focuses primarily on access to "evidence-based" (Western) medicine and rarely mentions traditional or alternative medical practices. Health care systems as administered by national governments are considered in light of practical health care delivery and national health outcomes, as well as regulatory and administrative frameworks. The nearly 600-page volume comprises country rankings, chronology, countries, bibliography, resource guide, glossary and an index.
Country rankings present the top ten and bottom ten countries for a variety of health indicators based on data from CIA World Factbook 2012 edition, United Nations Development Program, World Economic Forum, Population Reference Bureau and WHO's World Health Report (2008). The health indicators are categorized as: outcomes (including life expectancy, infant and maternal mortality, child malnutrition, adult HIV and adult obesity prevalence); health services (including physician and hospital bed densities per 1,000, per cent of births attended by a skilled health professional and total health expenditures as a percentage of GDP); Demographics (including birth, death and population growth rates; Human Development Index and Global Gender Gap scores; GDP per capita; distribution of family income; population; urbanization and rate of urbanization; and geographic area); and comparative health system information (including WHO...