Health Systems and Policy

Drawing on case studies from optometrists, physiotherapists, pedorthists and allied health assistants, this book offers an innovative comparison of allied health occupations in Australia and Britain. Adopting a theory of the sociology of health professions, it explores how the allied health professions can achieve their professional goals.

This book analyses the political and long-term systemic factors associated with the failures to control COVID-19 in England. Exploring the role of key policy actors, it focuses on two policy failings during the first wave: the establishment of a ‘Test, Trace and Isolate’ system and responses to the high death rate in care homes for older people.

Adult social care was the first major social policy domain in England to be transferred from the state to the market. This book meticulously charts this shift, challenges the dominant market paradigm, explores alternative models for a post-Covid-19 future and locates the debate within the wider political thinking and policy change literature.

This is the first comprehensive text on commissioning for health and social care taking students, practitioners and managers through key stages of the commissioning cycle as well as addressing cross-cutting themes.

This timely book is the most comprehensive account yet of recent commissioning practice in the English NHS and its impact on health services and the healthcare system.

This book provides a rigorous and challenging review of recent research in the realms of communication and cultural diversity. Focusing on health communication interventions concerning service users who may lack fluency in English, it shows that meeting the needs of all health service users depends on both structures and processes of communication.

This book argues that the traditional government approach of exhorting individuals to live healthier lifestyles is not enough - action to promote public health needs to take place not just through public agencies, but also by engaging community assets and resources in their broadest sense.

Using Qualitative Comparative Analysis to explore 11 developed countries’ health services, this ambitious text identifies which factors are associated with the strongest outcomes.

The credit crunch continues to threaten publicly-funded health care. In this timely and accessible book, Cam Donaldson considers value for money in the NHS and what can be achieved through reform and priority setting.

Critical realism helps researchers to extend and clarify their analyses. This original text draws on international examples of health and illness research across the life course, from small studies to large trials, to show how versatile critical realism can be in validating research and connecting it to policy and practice.

The first book to bring together both advocates and critics of the personalisation agenda in English social care services to debate key issues.

This book contains everything there is to know about the purpose and history of personal health budgets, the evidence for their effectiveness and the challenges they pose to traditional healthcare systems.