Powell and Mannion's review of reviews maps the landscape of health policy research, showing a number of problematic and longstanding features. This commentary focuses on the extent to which health ...parochialism is good for the scientific development of the literature, the extent to which a "tournament of theories" actually develops our understanding of health policy process, and, finally, whether circumscribed theories of the policy process might be missing some of the most important and useful findings of broader comparative politics, which focus on the ways policies create politics over time. It concludes that health parochialism and focus on a circumscribed policy process is not likely to be helpful because it distracts attention from the ways in which coalitions and institutions over time shape politics and policy, a finding explored by scholars of many sectors whose findings should influence health policy research.
This commentary considers the impact of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic on the study of populist radical right (PRR) politicians and their influence on public health and health ...policy. A systematic review of recent research on the influence of PRR politicians on the health and welfare policies shows that health is not a policy arena that these politicians have much experience in. In office, their effects can be destructive, primarily because they subordinate health to their other goals. Brazil, the US and the UK all show this pattern. PRR politicians in opposition such as the Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ) in Austria or the Lega in Italy, said very little during the actual health crisis, but once the public no longer appeared afraid they lost no time in reactivating anti-European Union (EU) sentiments. Whether in government or in opposition, PRR politicians opted for distraction and denial. Their effects ranged from making the pandemic worse.
COVID-19 is the most significant global crisis of any of our lifetimes. The numbers have been stupefying, whether of infection and mortality, the scale of public health measures, or the economic ...consequences of shutdown. Coronavirus Politics identifies key threads in the global comparative discussion that continue to shed light on COVID-19 and shape debates about what it means for scholarship in health and comparative politics. Editors Scott L. Greer, Elizabeth J. King, Elize Massard da Fonseca, and André Peralta-Santos bring together over 30 authors versed in politics and the health issues in order to understand the health policy decisions, the public health interventions, the social policy decisions, their interactions, and the reasons. The book’s coverage is global, with a wide range of key and exemplary countries, and contains a mixture of comparative, thematic, and templated country studies. All go beyond reporting and monitoring to develop explanations that draw on the authors' expertise while engaging in structured conversations across the book.
How epigenetic information is transmitted from generation to generation remains largely unknown. Deletion of the C. elegans histone H3 lysine 4 dimethyl (H3K4me2) demethylase spr-5 leads to inherited ...accumulation of the euchromatic H3K4me2 mark and progressive decline in fertility. Here, we identified multiple chromatin-modifying factors, including H3K4me1/me2 and H3K9me3 methyltransferases, an H3K9me3 demethylase, and an H3K9me reader, which either suppress or accelerate the progressive transgenerational phenotypes of spr-5 mutant worms. Our findings uncover a network of chromatin regulators that control the transgenerational flow of epigenetic information and suggest that the balance between euchromatic H3K4 and heterochromatic H3K9 methylation regulates transgenerational effects on fertility.
Summary US Presidents make their mark on health, for better or worse. Donald Trump campaigned on a populist platform to “make America great again”. While the actual policies his administration will ...pursue—and the priority he will place on each of them—remain in many ways uncertain, both his statements and his nominations for key government posts suggest that his presidency could have profound implications for health. His proposal to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act with a “better reform”, his stance on reproductive rights, and his approaches to other areas, such as science policy and climate change, coupled with his stated intention to put “America first” are creating anxiety and uncertainty about America's domestic health policies and its global leadership role in areas such as security and development. We propose criteria on which the global health community can judge the success or failure of a Trump presidency, based on a selection of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals that apply to health.
The professional autonomy of physicians often requires they take responsibility for life and death decisions, but they must also find ways to avoid bearing the full weight of such decisions. We ...conducted in‐person, semi‐structured interviews with neonatologists (n = 20) in four waves between 1978 and 2017 in a single Midwestern U.S. city. Using open coding analysis, we found over time that neonatologists described changes in their sense of professional autonomy and responsibility for decisions with life and death consequences. Through the early 1990s, as neonatology consolidated as a profession, physicians simultaneously enjoyed high levels of professional discretion and responsibility and were often constrained by bioethics and the law. By 2010s, high involvement of parents and collaboration with multiple subspecialties diffused the burden felt by individual practitioners, but neonatology’s professional autonomy was correlatively diminished. Decision‐making in the NICU over four decades reveal a complex relationship between the professional autonomy of neonatologist and the burden they bear, with some instances of ceding autonomy as a protective measure and other situations of unwelcomed erosion of professional autonomy that neonatologists see as complicating provision of care.
Scotland and Catalonia, both ancient nations with strong nationalisms within larger states, are exemplars of the management of ethnic conflict in multinational democracies and of global trends toward ...regional government. Focusing on these two countries, Scott L. Greer explores why nationalist mobilization arose when it did and why it stopped at autonomy rather than statehood. He challenges the notion that national identity or institutional design explains their relative success as stable multinational democracies and argues that the key is their strong regional societies and their regional organizations' preferences for autonomy and environmental stability
What does federalism do to welfare states? This question arises in scholarly debates about policy design as well as in discussions about the right political institutions for a country. It has ...frustrated many, with federalism seeming to matter in all sorts of combinations with all sorts of issues, from nationalism to racism to intergovernmental competition. The diffuse federalism literature has not come to compelling answers for very basic questions. Scott L. Greer, Daniel Béland, André Lecours, and Kenneth A. Dubin argue for a new approach—one methodologically focused on configurations of variables within cases rather than a fruitless attempt to isolate “the” effect of federalism; and one that is substantively engaged with identifying key elements in configurations as well as with when and how their interactions matter. Born out of their work on a multi-year, eleven-country project (published as Federalism and Social Policy: Patterns of Redistribution in Eleven Countries, University of Michigan Press, 2019), this book comprises a methodological and substantive agenda. Methodologically, the authors shift to studies that embraced and understood the complexity within which federal political institutions operate. Substantively, they make an argument for the importance of plurinationalism, changing economic interests, and institutional legacies.
Since devolution in 1998, the UK has had four increasingly distinct health systems, in England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales.
Secondary literature and authors' own research since 1998.
From a ...similar starting point, there has been a considerable distancing of the four health systems from each other in policies, priorities and organization.
The comparative efficiency and quality of the different systems as well as the wisdom of their greater or lesser reliance on integration and competition.
Better and more comparable public data would be useful, as would consideration of potential devolved lessons for UK policy.
Comparisons of organization and performance at levels more detailed than whole systems; analysis of the resilience and management of different systems in a context of budgetary austerity; analysis of the politics behind policy decisions.
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