Promoting equitable access to health care for households

McIntyre, Diane; Gilson, Lucy

Promoting equitable access to health care for households

dc.contributor.author	McIntyre, Diane
dc.contributor.author	Gilson, Lucy
dc.date	2011-06
dc.date.accessioned	2014-09-19T12:58:22Z
dc.date.available	2014-09-19T12:58:22Z
dc.date.issued	2014-09-19
dc.description	Funded by Rockefeller Foundation.
dc.description	Omnipraticien image by docnutpics shared under a CC-BY-NC-ND license.
dc.description.abstract	To develop an understanding of the dimensions of access to health care; Create greater awareness of health care access constraints from the household perspective; Promote critical evaluation of policy options to address access constraints in relation to equity goals; Promote and strengthen effective development and implementation of equitable health sector policies. The idea for developing this set of training materials arose from the ‘Affordability Ladder Program’ (ALPS). The ALPS initiative focused on the experience of households of illness and of seeking health care. As the name would suggest, a key focus of ALPS was that of affordability and other aspects of access to health care for households. The ALPS team recognised that almost all of the training materials presently available focus on illness and health services from the health system’s perspective, with little or no attention devoted to the perspective of households. In addition, few of the available materials focus explicitly on the issue of equity, which should be seen as a priority in the context of growing awareness of substantial inequities in existing health systems; the majority of training materials are presently directed towards efforts to promote efficiency of health services. This was seen as an important gap, in that health care managers and policy makers will be better placed to design and implement health care policies and detailed plans that meet population needs if they are aware of the experience of households and if equity is the ‘lens’ through which alternative policies are considered. Finally, despite access to health care being a key policy objective by many countries, there is a lack of clarity about how access is defined and what constitutes access. It is, thus, also important to explore the different aspects of access in greater detail so that equitable access can become a reality. On this basis, it was decided to develop a set of training materials that present participants with an equity ‘lens’ through which to view the challenges of promoting health system access, focusing attention on households’ experience of illness and health service access. TARGET GROUPS: The training materials can be used for a diverse set of target groups, but are primarily aimed at current and future health sector managers. It is also envisaged that the case studies can be used on an ad-hoc basis in post-graduate programs such as Masters in Public Health programs. CASE STUDY MATERIALS: Six case studies have been prepared for this course: Experiences of households in Sri Lanka; Availability of health services and resource allocation; Affordability of drugs in the context of the World Trade Organisation (WTO); Tax and insurance funding for health systems; Health service acceptability issues; Access board game	en_ZA
dc.identifier.apacitation	2014. <i>Promoting equitable access to health care for households.</i> http://hdl.handle.net/11427/7574	en_ZA
dc.identifier.chicagocitation	. 2014. <i>Promoting equitable access to health care for households.</i> http://hdl.handle.net/11427/7574	en_ZA
dc.identifier.citation	McIntyre, D., Gilson, L. 2014-09-19. Promoting equitable access to health care for households. Case Study. University of Cape Town.	en_ZA
dc.identifier.ris	TY - Other AU - McIntyre, Diane AU - Gilson, Lucy AB - To develop an understanding of the dimensions of access to health care; Create greater awareness of health care access constraints from the household perspective; Promote critical evaluation of policy options to address access constraints in relation to equity goals; Promote and strengthen effective development and implementation of equitable health sector policies. The idea for developing this set of training materials arose from the ‘Affordability Ladder Program’ (ALPS). The ALPS initiative focused on the experience of households of illness and of seeking health care. As the name would suggest, a key focus of ALPS was that of affordability and other aspects of access to health care for households. The ALPS team recognised that almost all of the training materials presently available focus on illness and health services from the health system’s perspective, with little or no attention devoted to the perspective of households. In addition, few of the available materials focus explicitly on the issue of equity, which should be seen as a priority in the context of growing awareness of substantial inequities in existing health systems; the majority of training materials are presently directed towards efforts to promote efficiency of health services. This was seen as an important gap, in that health care managers and policy makers will be better placed to design and implement health care policies and detailed plans that meet population needs if they are aware of the experience of households and if equity is the ‘lens’ through which alternative policies are considered. Finally, despite access to health care being a key policy objective by many countries, there is a lack of clarity about how access is defined and what constitutes access. It is, thus, also important to explore the different aspects of access in greater detail so that equitable access can become a reality. On this basis, it was decided to develop a set of training materials that present participants with an equity ‘lens’ through which to view the challenges of promoting health system access, focusing attention on households’ experience of illness and health service access. TARGET GROUPS: The training materials can be used for a diverse set of target groups, but are primarily aimed at current and future health sector managers. It is also envisaged that the case studies can be used on an ad-hoc basis in post-graduate programs such as Masters in Public Health programs. CASE STUDY MATERIALS: Six case studies have been prepared for this course: Experiences of households in Sri Lanka; Availability of health services and resource allocation; Affordability of drugs in the context of the World Trade Organisation (WTO); Tax and insurance funding for health systems; Health service acceptability issues; Access board game DA - 2014-09-19 DB - OpenUCT DP - University of Cape Town J1 - Click here to access this resource KW - households KW - health care access KW - equity LK - https://open.uct.ac.za PB - University of Cape Town PY - 2014 T1 - Promoting equitable access to health care for households TI - Promoting equitable access to health care for households UR - http://hdl.handle.net/11427/7574 ER -	en_ZA
dc.identifier.uri	http://hdl.handle.net/11427/7574
dc.identifier.vancouvercitation	. 2014. <i>Promoting equitable access to health care for households.</i> http://hdl.handle.net/11427/7574	en_ZA
dc.language	eng	en_ZA
dc.publisher.department	Health Economics Unit	en_ZA
dc.publisher.faculty	Faculty of Health Sciences	en_ZA
dc.publisher.institution	University of Cape Town
dc.rights	Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)	*
dc.rights.uri	http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/	*
dc.source	Click here to access this resource
dc.source.uri	https://vula.uct.ac.za/access/content/group/9c29ba04-b1ee-49b9-8c85-9a468b556ce2/HealthEconomics/ALPS%20case-studies/index.html
dc.subject	households	en_ZA
dc.subject	health care access	en_ZA
dc.subject	equity	en_ZA
dc.title	Promoting equitable access to health care for households	en_ZA
dc.type	Other	en_ZA
uct.type.filetype
uct.type.filetype	Text
uct.type.filetype	Image
uct.type.publication	Research	en_ZA
uct.type.resource	Case Study	en_ZA