Risk Management and Healthcare Policy

Dove Medical Press is pleased to invite you to submit your research to an upcoming Article Collection on "Global South's Unmet Needs - Risk to Sustainable Use of Pharmaceuticals and Medical Devices", organized by Guest Advisors Professor Mihajlo Jakovljevic and Professor Maria José Muñoz Torrecillas in Risk Management and Healthcare Policy.

Global South consists of a large diversity of healthcare and pharmaceutical markets belonging mostly to the Low-and-Middle-Income countries scattered across Latin America, Africa, Asia and the Pacific islands. These nations, and in particular the rapidly developing Emerging BRICS / EM7 / MIST markets among them, will continue to lead real GDP growth worldwide in the upcoming decades.

Consequently, the Global South countries also lead the global demand for pharmaceuticals (in terms of volume based / subscription drugs turn over) and medical services. This fact is becoming more prominent as the vast majority of global burden of noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) and Population Aging is also moving from the historical dominant trend in the Global North nations towards the South. With low fertility, there is ongoing extinction of traditional family caregiving across these vast regions. This makes the need to secure long terms care provision urgent, a necessity which is hard to finance.

There remains a strong and increasing gap in sustainability of financing of hospital and home-based long-term care for patients suffering from NCDs in these countries. This is witnessed with a huge gap between the ability to publicly finance universal health coverage, even with rather shallow insurance premiums consisting only of basic services and medical goods.

Last but not least, high out-of-pocket expenditure leads to catastrophic household expenditure in many families which is also a remarkable feature of social vulnerability of poor citizens in these nations. Poor sustainability of fiscal streams intended to secure provision of such medical goods and services is well documented in the seminal literature. The most typical manifestations are frequent drug shortages of essential medicines and lengthy hospital waiting times for rather sensitive therapies such as oncology, orthopedic surgery and invasive radiology. This Article Collection is intended to welcome a wide diversity of submissions, capable of covering any of the aforementioned unmet needs and challenges.

All manuscripts submitted to this Article Collection will undergo desk assessment and peer-review as part of our standard editorial process. Guest Advisors for this collection will not be involved in peer-reviewing manuscripts unless they are an existing member of the Editorial Board. Please review the journal Aims and Scope and author submission instructions prior to submitting a manuscript.

The deadline for submissions is 30 June 2024.

Please submit your manuscript on our website, quoting the promo code DMOXB to indicate that your submission is for consideration in this Article Collection.

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Dove Medical Press is pleased to invite you to submit your research to an upcoming Article Collection on "Rethinking Public Health Approaches to Crisis Response: Putting People First", organized by Guest Advisors Prof. Susannah Mayhew, Dr. Luise Enria, and Dr. Alhaji N’jai in Risk Management and Healthcare Policy. 

Recent decades have seen increasingly unpredictable outbreaks of zoonotic and emerging infectious diseases (such as SARS, Zika, Ebola, Covid), changing climate, widespread economic crises and regular outbreaks of violent conflict. The uncertainty of these crises makes it difficult to plan and meet the health needs of the populations facing them. Moreover, indigenous knowledge and the experiences and views of affected populations are rarely considered part of preparedness planning or crisis-response, despite being critical to it. Research on responses to epidemics highlights how a lack of community trust and involvement in formal response strategies undermines efforts to stop the spread of the disease and puts people in life-threatening positions. Experiences from agriculture show the importance of local engagement in decision-making when planning for climate-resilient livelihoods. These experiences provide critical learning to redefine our thinking on emergency responses and global health security. 

Research has called for greater commitment to involving a variety of local first responders in public health crises as a key step to establishing the inclusive, trust-based decision-making critical for effective crisis response. However, there is little robust evidence from the health sector of “what works” or “why it works” for community engagement and involvement, the role of local knowledge, or how formal health sector and humanitarian crisis-response structures can support and sustain local action to safeguard health. Although guidelines exist on “risk communication and community engagement” they seldom detail genuinely participatory approaches or meaningful community-led action in shaping crisis-response and preparedness planning. Valuable local knowledge is therefore too often ignored. 

This Collection welcomes submissions that detail actions, experiences, models, or mechanisms of the involvement of community members and local knowledge in responses to any clearly defined public health crisis. We welcome empirical data studies of any relevant study design, particularly those using participatory methods and those seeking to put local knowledge first. We especially welcome contributions led by authors from the global-South. 

All manuscripts submitted to this Article Collection will undergo desk assessment and peer-review as part of our standard editorial process. Guest Advisors for this collection will not be involved in peer-reviewing manuscripts unless they are an existing member of the Editorial Board. Please review the journal Aims and Scope and author submission instructions prior to submitting a manuscript.

The deadline for submissions is 31 July 2024.

Please submit your manuscript on our website, quoting the promo code EBOSK to indicate that your submission is for consideration in this Article Collection.

Guest advisers

Professor Susannah Mayhew, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine

[email protected]

Susannah Mayhew is Professor of Health Policy, Systems and Reproductive Health at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. Her research specialisations are in policy analysis, policy implementation, governance and accountability research – including community engagement; health systems and systems integration research (including in epidemic-response); and reproductive health and rights. She has led multi-partner research projects in numerous countries across sub-Saharan Africa and South East Asia. At present she works primarily in West and East Africa on cross-sectoral responses to climate and health challenges, including reproductive health and zoonotic outbreaks, with a focus on community involvement.

Dr. Luisa Enria, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine

[email protected]

Luisa Enria is Assistant Professor in Anthropology at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. Her work applies approaches from medical and political anthropology to study how communities engage with, imagine and at times resist development and humanitarian interventions, with a particular focus on health emergencies. She worked as a social scientist on the Ebola vaccine trials in Sierra Leone as well as several projects on the political economy of emergency vaccine deployment, rumors in epidemics, assessing community engagement for vaccine campaigns in humanitarian settings and she has developed a training on citizen ethnography for Community Health Workers. She currently holds a UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship on the politics of knowledge in epidemic preparedness.

Dr. Alhaji U. N’jai

[email protected]

Alhaji U. N’jai is Associate Professor in Immunology, Infectious Disease, Toxicology, environmental science, and Public Health at University of Sierra Leone with dual appointment at California University of Science and Medicine. He is also director of University of Wisconsin-Madison Global Health Institute’s One Health Center, West Africa. Dr. N’jai has a broad multidisciplinary research interest at the intersection of biomedical science (infectious disease, toxicology, immunology, genomics, systems biology), environmental science, epidemiology, One Health, anthropology, and indigenous African Knowledge systems. Since December 2014, he has led the Ebola control and infectious disease emerging in Africa (IDEA) research initiative in Sierra Leone resulting in international collaborative projects on Ebola and infectious diseases between University of Sierra Leone, University of Wisconsin-Madison, and University of Tokyo. Dr. N’jai is a principal investigator for Abbott Pandemic Defense Coalition (APDC) Acute Febrile Illness Surveillance in Sierra Leone. He is also the founder and chief strategist for Project 1808 and Koinadugu College. Dr. N’jai was deputy incident manager for Ebola in 2021 and currently serves as a senior technical advisor for the Directorate of Health Securities and Emergencies (DHSE) at Sierra Leone Ministry of Health as well as the chairman of the One Health Technical Working Group in Sierra Leone.

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Dove Medical Press is pleased to invite you to submit your research to an upcoming Article Collection on "Advancing Patient Safety Culture and Managing Healthcare Risks for Sustainable Healthcare", organized by Guest Advisors Prof. Hsin-Hung Wu, Dr. Chih-Hsuan Huang and Dr. Yii-Ching Lee in Risk Management and Healthcare Policy. 

This Article Collection focuses on a critically important aspect of modern healthcare: “Advancing Patient Safety Culture and Managing Healthcare Risks for Sustainable Healthcare.” The evolving area of this proposal bridges the gap between patient safety, risk management, and sustainability in healthcare. As healthcare systems worldwide strive for patient-centered care, it has become crucial to recognize that a culture fostering patient safety and effective risk management strategies contributes significantly to the overall sustainability of healthcare institutions. 

This topic’s relevance stems from the contemporary need for a safer and more efficient healthcare sector. With the rising complexity in healthcare processes, patient safety and risk management have become paramount. They form the bedrock for the trust patients place in healthcare systems. More so, effective management of these aspects often leads to significant cost savings, thereby promoting the sustainability of healthcare services. In a broader perspective, cultivating a patient safety culture and implementing comprehensive risk management plans contribute to the overall health outcomes and well-being of the society at large. 

In the Collection within the ambit of the “Risk Management and Healthcare Policy” journal, we invite submissions encompassing our theme. Relevant subtopics include, but are not limited to, methods of enhancing patient safety culture, new and innovative approaches to healthcare risk management, the role of policy and leadership in promoting patient safety, and the influence of digital technology on patient safety and risk management. These themes explore the intersection between patient safety, risk management, and the overall sustainability of healthcare institutions. We welcome submissions of various article types, including original research articles, reviews, case studies, commentaries, and policy analyses. This Collection aims to stimulate informed dialogue, inform policy alterations, and inspire future research in these key areas of healthcare management. 

Keywords

• Patient Safety Culture
• Healthcare Risk Management
• Enhancing Patient Engagement in Healthcare
• Healthcare Policy
• Healthcare Quality Improvement

All manuscripts submitted to this Article Collection will undergo desk assessment and peer-review as part of our standard editorial process. Guest Advisors for this collection will not be involved in peer-reviewing manuscripts unless they are an existing member of the Editorial Board. Please review the journal Aims and Scope and author submission instructions prior to submitting a manuscript. 

The deadline for submissions is 31 July 2024.

Please submit your manuscript on our website, quoting the promo code NTEGW to indicate that your submission is for consideration in this Article Collection.

Guest advisers

Professor Hsin-Hung Wu, Department of Business Administration, National Changhua University of Education

[email protected]

Changhua, Taiwan Hsin-Hung Wu is a Professor at National Changhua University of Education (NCUE), Changhua, Taiwan since August 2006. Currently, he is Dean of College of Management at NCUE since September 2020. His research interests mainly focus on patient safety culture, dementia care and patient safety culture. He has published 220 journal papers since 1999

Professor Chih-Hsuan Huang, Business School, Hubei University of Economics

[email protected]

Chih-Hsuan Huang received his PhD from the Business School in Brisbane, Australia. He is Associate Professor with the Business School at Hubei University of Economics. His research interests include patient safety, medical quality, and sustainable management. His research in these areas has appeared in a journal such as Asia Pacific Journal of Marketing and Logistics, Journal of Environmental Planning and Management, and Journal of Pediatric Nursing etc.

Professor Yii-Ching Lee, Department of Health Business Administration, Hung Kuang University

[email protected]

Yii-Ching Lee is Assistant Professor at the Department of Health Business Administration at Hung Kuang University. His main areas of research interests are in medical quality, patient safety, rational bond, rational marketing, and hospital management.

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