Alteridade ou austeridade: uma revisão acerca do valor da equidade em saúde em tempos de crise econômica internacional

Popular Health, Environmental and Occupational Surveillance: an integrative literature review

The objective is to identify concepts, experiences, methods, and techniques in Popular Health, Environmental and Occupational Surveillance (VPSAT). This is an integrative review that used the descriptors: Community Participation, Public Health Surveillance, Environmental Health, and Occupational Health, using five databases: Virtual Health Library, EBSCOhost, Embase, Scopus and Web of Science. The review selected 15 studies, based on the inclusion criteria: surveillance experiences with community protagonism; and exclusion criteria: research without primary data and developed only by the health service. The theoretical and methodological bases of the studies were identified as citizen science, popular education, and environmental justice; experiences such as participatory mapping and monitoring; methods such as action research, 'do-it-yourself', and community-based research; and techniques such as "Photovoice" and Community Journal. Low-income urban communities, indigenous peoples, young individuals, and workers stand out as the protagonists. The recognition of the VPSAT as an important source of data and intervention by public health systems and academia contributes to making health surveillance more dialogic and effective.

Advancing universal health coverage in the COVID-19 era: an assessment of public health services technical efficiency and applied cost allocation in Cambodia

BACKGROUND

Achieving universal health coverage (UHC) is a global priority and a keystone element of the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals. However, COVID-19 is causing serious impacts on tax revenue and many countries are facing constraints to new investment in health. To advance UHC progress, countries can also focus on improving health system technical efficiency to maximize the service outputs given the current health financing levels.

METHODS

This study assesses Cambodia's public health services technical efficiency, unit costs, and utilization rates to quantify the extent to which current health financing can accommodate the expansion of social health protection coverage. This study employs Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), truncated regression, and pioneers the application of DEA Aumann-Shapley applied cost allocation to the health sector, enabling unit cost estimation for the major social health insurance payment categories.

RESULTS

Overall, for the public health system to be fully efficient output would need to increase by 34 and 73% for hospitals and health centers, respectively. We find public sector service quality, private sector providers, and non-discretionary financing to be statistically significant factors affecting technical efficiency. We estimate there is potential supply-side 'service space' to expand population coverage to an additional 4.69 million social health insurance beneficiaries with existing financing if the public health system were fully efficient.

CONCLUSIONS

Public health service efficiency in Cambodia can be improved by increasing utilization of cost-effective services. This can be achieved by enrolling more beneficiaries into the social health insurance schemes with current supply-side financing levels. Other factors that can lead to increased efficiency are improving health service quality, regulating private sector providers, focusing on discretionary health financing, and incentivizing a referral system.