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Although spending rates on health care and social services vary substantially across the states, little is known about the possible association between variation in state-level health outcomes and the allocation of state spending between health care and social services. To estimate that association, we used state-level repeated measures multivariable modeling for the period 2000-09, with region and time fixed effects adjusted for total spending and state demographic and economic characteristics and with one- and two-year lags. We found that states with a higher ratio of social to health spending (calculated as the sum of social service spending and public health spending divided by the sum of Medicare spending and Medicaid spending) had significantly better subsequent health outcomes for the following seven measures: adult obesity; asthma; mentally unhealthy days; days with activity limitations; and mortality rates for lung cancer, acute myocardial infarction, and type 2 diabetes. Our study suggests that broadening the debate beyond what should be spent on health care to include what should be invested in health-not only in health care but also in social services and public health-is warranted.

We summarized the recently published, peer-reviewed literature that examined the impact of investments in social services or investments in integrated models of health care and social services on health outcomes and health care spending. Of 39 articles that met criteria for inclusion in the review, 32 (82%) reported some significant positive effects on either health outcomes (N = 20), health care costs (N = 5), or both (N = 7). Of the remaining 7 (18%) studies, 3 had non-significant results, 2 had mixed results, and 2 had negative results in which the interventions were associated with poorer health outcomes. Our analysis of the literature indicates that several interventions in the areas of housing, income support, nutrition support, and care coordination and community outreach have had positive impact in terms of health improvements or health care spending reductions. These interventions may be of interest to health care policymakers and practitioners seeking to leverage social services to improve health or reduce costs. Further testing of models that achieve better outcomes at less cost is needed.

In this time of polarization and divisiveness across increasingly diverse communities, health policy and management research offers an important insight: engaging diversity meaningfully through inclusive leadership—that embraces staff across hierarchies and engages difference perspectives so that all healthcare workers of all kinds feel they can speak up and participate—can save lives. In multiple studies of quality in cardiovascular care, top performing hospitals have been shown to exhibit the capacity to embrace staff across hierarchies and engage differences so that healthcare workers of all kinds feel they can speak up and participate meaningfully in improvement efforts. Most recently, in the two-year, longitudinal Leadership Saves Lives study of 10 hospitals, the ability to adopt a culture of improvement rather than blaming was linked to significant reductions in risk-standardized mortality rates. Moreover, the guiding coalitions (ie, quality improvement teams) in six of the 10 hospitals that were most successful were distinguished in three ways that give insight about effective modes of engaging differences: (1) including staff from difference disciplines and levels in the organizational hierarchy, (2) encouraging authentic participation by the members, and (3) using constructive patterns of managing conflict (ie, having clear role definitions, working to surface minority viewpoints, and collectively revisiting the shared goal of saving lives). Based on this literature, adequately engaging a wide range of diverse viewpoints and staff roles can have a marked impact on health outcomes. Although the studies reviewed do not examine racial/ethnic diversity per se, they do lend insight into effectively navigating environments with extensive diversity of perspectives, professional identities, and experiences. Future research may assess whether these insights have application to other forms of diversity as well. In this time of extreme polarization and division globally and locally, health policy and management research has an opportunity to share evidence that could help navigate an increasingly diverse environment, at least within the field of healthcare, towards a more inclusive, humane, and life-giving approach to our collective future.

Recent reductions in average door-to-balloon (D2B) times have not been associated with decreases in mortality at the population level. We investigated this seemingly paradoxical finding by assessing components of this association at the individual and population levels simultaneously. We postulated that the changing population of patients undergoing primary percutaneous coronary intervention (pPCI) contributed to secular trends toward an increasing mortality risk, despite consistently decreased mortality in individual patients with shorter D2B times. This was a retrospective study of ST-elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) patients who underwent pPCI between Jan 1, 2005, and Dec 31, 2011, in the National Cardiovascular Data Registry (NCDR) CathPCI Registry. We looked for catheterisation laboratory visits associated with STEMI. We excluded patients not undergoing pPCI, transfer patients for pPCI, patients with D2B times less than 15 min or more than 3 h, and patients at hospitals that did not consistently report data across the study period. We assessed in-hospital mortality in the entire cohort and 6-month mortality in elderly patients aged 65 years or older matched to data from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. We built multilevel models to assess the relation between D2B time and in-hospital and 6-month mortality, including both individual and population-level components of this association after adjusting for patient and procedural factors. 423 hospitals reported data on 150 116 procedures with a 55% increase in the number of patients undergoing pPCI at these facilities over time, as well as many changes in patient and procedural factors. Annual D2B times decreased significantly from a median of 86 min (IQR 65–109) in 2005 to 63 min (IQR 47–80) in 2011 (p<0·0001) with a concurrent rise in risk-adjusted in-hospital mortality (from 4·7% to 5·3%; p=0·06) and risk-adjusted 6-month mortality (from 12·9% to 14·4%; p=0·001). In multilevel models, shorter patient-specific D2B times were consistently associated at the individual level with lower in-hospital mortality (adjusted OR for each 10 min decrease 0·92; 95% CI 0·91–0·93; p<0·0001) and 6-month mortality (adjusted OR for each 10 min decrease, 0·94; 95% CI 0·93–0·95; p<0·0001). By contrast, risk-adjusted in-hospital and 6-month mortality at the population level, independent of patient-specific D2B times, rose in the growing and changing population of patients undergoing pPCI during the study period. Shorter patient-specific D2B times were consistently associated with lower mortality over time, whereas secular trends suggest increased mortality risk in the growing and changing pPCI population. The absence of association of annual D2B time and changes in mortality at the population level should not be interpreted as an indication of its individual-level relation in patients with STEMI undergoing primary PCI. National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.

Objectives. We sought to provide a systematic review of the determinants of success in scaling up and sustaining community health worker (CHW) programs in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Methods. We searched 11 electronic databases for academic literature published through December 2010 (n = 603 articles). Two independent reviewers applied exclusion criteria to identify articles that provided empirical evidence about the scale-up or sustainability of CHW programs in LMICs, then extracted data from each article by using a standardized form. We analyzed the resulting data for determinants and themes through iterated categorization. Results. The final sample of articles (n = 19) present data on CHW programs in 16 countries. We identified 23 enabling factors and 15 barriers to scale-up and sustainability, which were grouped into 3 thematic categories: program design and management, community fit, and integration with the broader environment. Conclusions. Scaling up and sustaining CHW programs in LMICs requires effective program design and management, including adequate training, supervision, motivation, and funding; acceptability of the program to the communities served; and securing support for the program from political leaders and other health care providers.

Experts have suggested that intersectoral partnerships between prayer camps and biomedical care providers may be an effective strategy to address the overwhelming shortage of mental health care workers in Africa and other low-income settings. Nevertheless, previous studies have not explored whether the prayer camp and biomedical staff beliefs and practices provide sufficient common ground to enable cooperative relationships. Therefore, we sought to examine the beliefs and practices of prayer camp staff and the perspective of biomedical care providers, with the goal of characterizing interest in-and potential for-intersectoral partnership between prayer camp staff and biomedical care providers. We conducted 50 open-ended, semi-structured interviews with prophets and staff at nine Christian prayer camps in Ghana, and with staff within Ghana's three public psychiatric hospitals. We used the purposive sampling method to recruit participants and the constant comparative method for qualitative data analysis. Prayer camp staff expressed interest in collaboration with biomedical mental health care providers, particularly if partnerships could provide technical support introducing medications in the prayer camp and address key shortcomings in their infrastructure and hygienic conditions. Nevertheless, challenges for collaboration were apparent as prayer camp staff expressed strong beliefs in a spiritual rather than biomedical explanatory model for mental illness, frequently used fasting and chained restraints in the course of treatment, and endorsed only short-term use of medication to treat mental illness-expressing concerns that long-term medication regimens masked underlying spiritual causes of illness. Biomedical providers were skeptical about the spiritual interpretations of mental illness held by faith healers, and were concerned by the use of chains, fasting, and the lack of adequate living facilities for patients in prayer camps; many, however, expressed interest in engaging with prayer camps to expand access to clinical care for patients residing in the camps. The findings demonstrate that biomedical care providers are interested in engaging with prayer camps. Key areas where partnerships may best improve conditions for patients at prayer camps include collaborating on creating safe and secure physical spaces and delivering medication for mental illness to patients living in prayer camps. However, while prayer camp staff are willing to engage biomedical knowledge, deeply held beliefs and routine practices of faith and biomedical healers are difficult to reconcile Additional discussion is needed to find the common ground on which the scarce resources for mental health care in Ghana can collaborate most effectively.

Ethiopia has one of the highest maternal mortality ratios in Africa. Few have examined the quality of labour and delivery (L&D) care in the country. This study evaluated the quality of routine L&D care and identified patient-level and hospital-level factors associated with the quality of care in a subset of government hospitals. This was a facility-based, cross-sectional study using direct non-participant observation carried out in 2016. All mothers who received routine L&D care services at government hospitals (n = 20) in one of the populous regions of Ethiopia, Southern Nations Nationalities and People's Region (SNNPR), were included. Mixed effects multilevel linear regression modeling was employed in two stages using hospital as a random effect, with quality of L&D care as the outcome and selected patient and hospital characteristics as independent variables. Patient characteristics included woman's age, number of previous births, number of skilled attendants involved in care process, and presence of any danger sign in current pregnancy. Hospital characteristics included teaching hospital status, mean number of attended births in the previous year, number of fulltime skilled attendants in the L&D ward, whether the hospital had offered refresher training on L&D care in the previous 12 months, and the extent to which the hospital met the 2014 Ethiopian Ministry of Health standards regarding to resources available for providing quality of L&D care (measured on a 0-100% scale). These standards pertain to availability of human resource by category and training status, availability of essential drugs, supplies and equipment in L&D ward, availability of laboratory services and safe blood, and availability of essential guidelines for key L&D care processes. On average, the hospitals met two-thirds of the standards for L&D care quality, with substantial variation between hospitals (standard deviation 10.9 percentage points). While the highest performing hospital met 91.3% of standards, the lowest performing hospital met only 35.8% of the standards. Hospitals had the highest adherence to standards in the domain of immediate and essential newborn care practices (86.8%), followed by the domain of care during the second and third stages of labour (77.9%). Hospitals scored substantially lower in the domains of active management of third stage of labour (AMTSL) (42.2%), interpersonal communication (47.2%), and initial assessment of the woman in labour (59.6%). We found the quality of L&D care score was significantly higher for women who had a history of any danger sign (β = 5.66; p-value = 0.001) and for women who were cared for at a teaching hospital (β = 12.10; p-value = 0.005). Additionally, hospitals with lower volume and more resources available for L&D care (P-values < 0.01) had higher L&D quality scores. Overall, the quality of L&D care provided to labouring mothers at government hospitals in SNNPR was limited. Lack of adherence to standards in the areas of the critical tasks of initial assessment, AMTSL, interpersonal communication during L&D, and respect for women's preferences are especially concerning. Without greater attention to the quality of L&D care, regardless of how accessible hospital L&D care becomes, maternal and neonatal mortality rates are unlikely to decrease substantially.

Early administration of reperfusion therapy improves survival among patients with ST-elevation myocardial infarction. For primary percutaneous intervention, a goal of 90 minutes or less for door-to-balloon time is incorporated into many measures of quality performance, but delay remains common, with little improvement in this measure over recent years. This review examines the strategies for reducing door-to-balloon time and for selecting the appropriate reperfusion therapy, especially when a delay is unavoidable. Early administration of reperfusion therapy improves survival among patients with ST-elevation myocardial infarction. This review examines the strategies for reducing door-to-balloon time and for selecting the appropriate reperfusion therapy, especially when a delay is unavoidable. Early administration of reperfusion therapy improves survival in patients with ST-elevation myocardial infarction by reestablishing coronary blood flow within the occluded infarct-related artery. 1 Primary percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) is superior to fibrinolytic therapy when performed rapidly by expert teams, 2 but its effectiveness may be limited by delays in delivery. 3 Recent national efforts are drawing attention to the importance of door-to-balloon time as a key indicator of quality of care for patients with ST-elevation myocardial infarction who are treated with primary PCI. 4 The American College of Cardiology (ACC), in collaboration with the American Heart Association (AHA), the American College of Emergency . . .

Despite the benefits of childhood vaccinations, vaccination rates in low-income countries (LICs) vary widely. Increasing coverage of vaccines to 90% in the poorest countries over the next 10 years has been estimated to prevent 426 million cases of illness and avert nearly 6.4 million childhood deaths worldwide. Consequently, we sought to provide a comprehensive examination of contemporary vaccination patterns in East Africa and to identify common and country-specific barriers to complete childhood vaccination. Using data from the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) for Burundi, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Uganda, we looked at the prevalence of complete vaccination for polio, measles, Bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG) and DTwPHibHep (DTP) as recommended by the WHO among children ages 12 to 23 months. We conducted multivariable logistic regression within each country to estimate associations between complete vaccination status and health care access and sociodemographic variables using backwards stepwise regression. Vaccination varied significantly by country. In all countries, the majority of children received at least one dose of a WHO recommended vaccine; however, in Ethiopia, Tanzania, and Uganda less than 50% of children received a complete schedule of recommended vaccines. Being delivered in a public or private institution compared with being delivered at home was associated with increased odds of complete vaccination status. Sociodemographic covariates were not consistently associated with complete vaccination status across countries. Although no consistent set of predictors accounted for complete vaccination status, we observed differences based on region and the location of delivery. These differences point to the need to examine the historical, political, and economic context of each country in order to maximize vaccination coverage. Vaccination against these childhood diseases is a critical step towards reaching the Millennium Development Goal of reducing under-five mortality by two-thirds by 2015 and thus should be a global priority.

Strengthening district-level management may be an important lever for improving key public health outcomes in low-income settings; however, previous studies have not established the statistical associations between better management and primary healthcare system performance in such settings. To explore this gap, we conducted a cross-sectional study of 36 rural districts and 226 health centers in Ethiopia, a country which has made ambitious investment in expanding access to primary care over the last decade. We employed quantitative measure of management capacity at both the district health office and health center levels and used multiple regression models, accounting for clustering of health centers within districts, to estimate the statistical association between management capacity and a key performance indicator (KPI) summary score based on antenatal care coverage, contraception use, skilled birth attendance, infant immunization, and availability of essential medications. In districts with above median district management capacity, health center management capacity was strongly associated (p < 0.05) with KPI performance. In districts with below median management capacity, health center management capacity was not associated with KPI performance. Having more staff at the district health office was also associated with better KPI performance (p < 0.05) but only in districts with above median management capacity. The results suggest that district-level management may provide an opportunity for improving health system performance in low-income country settings.