Policy and Health

This rich volume provides a comprehensive look at how policy leads to better health. Leading RAND thinkers carefully explore different disciplines and create a masterful framework for students, scholars, and policymakers to use. Along the way we learn what is known and what we still need to learn about how policy and practice lead to better health outcomes in developing countries. Drawing on their broad experience in Asia, the authors begin by exploring the health effects of macroeconomic development, education, and technology. After making compelling arguments to use — and demand — evidence-based policy, the book first explores the epidemiologic burdens of long-standing infectious diseases with the rapid ascendancy of chronic diseases of the elderly and examines how effectively appropriate state-of-the-art clinical medicine can address these illnesses and promote well being. The book concludes with a remarkable discussion of politics, priorities, the private sector and what role Ministries or Departments of Health should play as they seek to translate policy objectives into better population health. This work is not only comprehensive, it is compelling in its clarity and focus on the policy and health of our times.