Archive for the ‘Latest News’ Category

The Oxford Emergent Tuberculosis Consortium (OETC) hosted a  meeting of TB experts during October 2011 in Cape Town. The meeting covered issues in the clinical development and implementation of late stage TB vaccines.
 
The OETC, a consortium that is developing a TB vaccine, is a joint venture between the University of Oxford and Emergent Product Development [...]

A 3-page policy brief summarises the findings of an MPH dissertation that analysed the cost effectiveness of improving the quality of care of children admitted in district hospitals in Kenya. Written by Dr Edwine Barasa, the work was supervised by Prof Mike English (Kenya Medical Research Institute & Oxford University) and A/Prof Sue Cleary (HEU).
 
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Following up on early 2011 discussions with the Kenya Medical Research Institute (KEMRI) about the prospect of increasing collaboration between researchers, September/October 2011 saw the arrival of two KEMRI researchers (Dr Sassy Molyneux and Mr Lairumbi Mbaabu) to the HEU offices to collaborate with HEU’s Professor Lucy Gilson and Associate Professor Sue Cleary (Prof Gilson [...]

A one-week reseach visit to the HEU by Prof John Eyles (McMaster Univ, Canada) is helping the REACH (researching equity in access to health care) researchers with the analysis of data. So far, work is exploring relationships between patients and providers.
The REACH study sites include Mpumalanga, the Western Cape, Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa. The [...]

Following the First Global Symposium on Health Systems Research in Montreux in November 2010, PLoS Medicine commissioned three articles on the state-of-the-art in Health Policy and Systems Research (HPSR). Three Policy Forum articles, authored by a diverse group of global health academics, critically examine the current challenges to the field and lay out what is [...]

A recent Health Policy and Planning journal article describes the Health Economics Unit (HEU) as “…a highly respected research institute, at both national and international levels…”
The findings are part of a broader study of several health policy analysis institutes in Africa and Asia that aimed to investigate the factors affecting capacity and sustainability of these [...]

The objective of the research reported here was to critically evaluate the two different task-shifting models and the pharmacist model for dispensing ART. The costs and impact on access to ART services for patients of each model were compared.  The infrastructure costs of introducing the ISPA model were also calculated to assist in planning for [...]

In Ghana, almost 3 percent of pregnant women are infected with HIV and an estimated 15 percent of infants born to them acquire the infection through breastfeeding. This policy brief draws on evidence from a recent study which investigated the factors influencing the choices of infant feeding of HIV-positive mothers in Ghana through an assessment [...]

During August, the Health Economics Unit hosted first-year & second-year students completing the online Postgraduate Diploma in Health Economics in Cape Town here at our offices for a one-week course of back-to-back modules. Flying down from different locations, students engaged with HEU teachers who covered modules in universal coverage, political economies of health care and [...]

SHEIKH, K., GILSON, L., AGYEPONG, I. A., HANSON, K., SSENGOOBA, F. & BENNETT, S. (2011) Building the field of health policy and systems research: framing the questions. PLoS Med, 8, e1001073.
Abstract: In the first of a series of articles addressing the current challenges and opportunities for the development of Health Policy & Systems Research (HPSR), [...]