Summary
Contents
Key Concepts in Health Studies provides a much needed guide to the central concepts used across the subject, and offers the reader a comprehensive overview of the core topics, theories and debates. Drawing together the fundamentals within the disciplines of health, nursing, and social policy this book is an ideal text both for students studying health in a range of academic fields, and for health and social care practitioners. From ageism to public health, and gender to obesity, the book offers an exciting guide to the multidisciplinary field.
Health Care Systems
Health Care Systems
The concept of a ‘health care system’ is generally normatively (and narrowly) defined as a coordinated system for the management of disease through the provision of clinical health care services (usually coterminous with the boundaries of a national state), rather than as a comprehensive system designed to achieve ‘health for all’ on the lines of the World Health Organization's definition of health as a ‘complete state of physical, mental, and social well-being’ (WHO, 1981).
The comparative analysis of health care systems (which usually include some elements of health improvement) generally assesses what have been described as the three key ‘functional’ dimensions of clinical health care provision as they apply to actually existing health care systems (Freeman, 2000: 1). These dimensions are ...