Browsing by Subject "Social policy"

Now showing 1 - 4 of 4
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    Priorities for research on equity and health: towards an equity-focused health research agenda
    (Public Library of Science, 2011) Östlin, Piroska; Schrecker, Ted; Sadana, Ritu; Bonnefoy, Josiane; Gilson, Lucy; Hertzman, Clyde; Kelly, Michael P; Kjellstrom, Tord; Labonté, Ronald; Lundberg, Olle
    A 2009 World Health Assembly resolution on reducing health inequities through action on social determinants of health [1] calls for stakeholders, including researchers and research funders, to give this topic high priority. In 2004, the World Health Organization (WHO) established a Task Force on Research Priorities to outline a global research agenda on equity and social determinants of health. Its 2005 report [2] contributed to the selection of themes for nine Knowledge Networks set up by WHO to support the Commission on Social Determinants of Health (CSDH) during 2005–2008. CSDH defined health equity as the absence of systematic differences in health, between and within countries, that are avoidable by reasonable action. Using health equity as the foundation of its approach, CSDH concluded [3] that "[s]ocial injustice is killing people on a grand scale" and made three overarching recommendations: improve people's daily living conditions; tackle the inequitable distribution of power, money, and resources; and measure and understand the problem and assess the impact of action. CSDH emphasized that knowledge gaps must not be used as a reason for postponing action on the ample body of evidence already available, but also highlighted the need for ongoing research with a focus on social determinants of health and health equity.
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    Program evaluation:principles, procedures and practises
    (Oxford University Press, 2007) Aurelio Jose Figueredo; Olderbak, Sally Gayle; Schlomer, Gabriel Lee; Garcia, Rafael Antonio; Wolf, Pedro
    This chapter provides a review of the current state of the principles, procedures, and practices within program evaluation. We address a few incisive and difficult questions about the current state of the field: (1) What are the kinds of program evaluations? (2)Why do program evaluation results often have so little impact on social policy? (3) Does program evaluation suffer from a counterproductive system of incentives? and (4) What do program evaluators actually do? We compare and contrast the merits and limitations, strengths and weaknesses, and relative progress of the two primary contemporary movements within program evaluation, Quantitative Methods and Qualitative Methods, and we propose an epistemological framework for integrating the two movements as complementary forms of investigation, each contributing to different stages in the scientific process. In the final section, we provide recommendations for systemic institutional reforms addressing identified structural problems within the real-world practice of program evaluation.
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    Trade unions, social policy & class compromise in Post-Apartheid South Africa
    (Taylor & Francis, 2004) Seekings, Jeremy
    The poor benefit greatly through redistribution through the budget in South Africa: Poor children attend public schools in large numbers and poor households benefit from a public welfare system that is exceptional in comparative terms. Trade unions have championed these apparently pro-poor policies, even though the trade union movement is not a movement of the poor in South Africa (there are very few union members in the poorest half of the population). Trade unions' record in acting as a movement for the poor is shaped by their primary objective of looking after their members' interests. In education, teachers and unions engage with the state as the employer more than as the provider of a social service. Teachers' unions were primarily responsible for securing more expenditure on poor schools in the mid-1 990s, but this was the result of increased salaries. Self-interest has led teachers and their unions to oppose, block or impede some reforms that would improve the quality of schooling for poor children. In welfare reform, trade unions have championed the cause of the basic income grant, which is in the interests of the poor. A close analysis suggests that organised labour is also acting here in part out of self-interest. The socialisation of welfare costs will reduce the burden on working people and would deflect criticism of union-backed policies that, arguably, contribute to an economic growth path characterised by high wages but low employment. In previous work I argued that post- apartheid South Africa entailed a double class compromise, between capital, labour and the poor. The evidence from these areas of social policy suggests that this argument overstated the power of the poor and underestimated that of organised labour.
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    Using qualitative evidence in decision making for health and social interventions: an approach to assess confidence in findings from qualitative evidence syntheses (GRADE-CERQual)
    (Public Library of Science, 2015) Lewin, Simon; Glenton, Claire; Munthe-Kaas, Heather; Carlsen, Benedicte; Colvin, Christopher J; Gülmezoglu, Metin; Noyes, Jane; Booth, Andrew; Garside, Ruth; Rashidian, Arash
    Simon Lewin and colleagues present a methodology for increasing transparency and confidence in qualitative research synthesis.