Health Policy

Health Policy is intended to be a vehicle for the exploration and discussion of health policy and health system issues and is aimed in particular at enhancing communication between health policy and system researchers, legislators, decision-makers and professionals concerned with developing, implementing, and analysing health policy, health systems and health care reforms, primarily in high-income countries outside the U.S.A.

Health care policies and reforms are made at an ever-increasing pace in countries around the world - and policy-makers are increasingly looking to other countries for solutions to their own problems. Health Policy is committed to support this international dialogue to ensure that policies are not just copied but used and adapted based on the specific problems and objectives as well as the respective context. The journal encourages the submission of short, full-length, comparative and review articles (as well as groups of articles in "special sections") which address:

What is happening in terms of policies, reforms, regulation etc. of health systems;
Where the ideas are coming from, i.e. whether they are "imported" from another country or developed within the country, and how innovative they are they in comparison to other countries;
Why it is happening, e.g. as a consequence of a change in government, popular dissatisfaction or (perceived) unsustainable cost increases, and what are the objectives;
The actors involved (both governmental as well as non-governmental), incl. their roles, their opinions and their strength in the decision and implementation process;
Intended and, especially, unintended effects of these policies or reforms on the health system in terms of access, appropriateness, costs, effectiveness, quality, patient experience and equity etc.;
Their final consequences in terms of health outcomes, financial protection and responsiveness to the population's legitimate expectations, i.e. a performance assessment of reforms and health systems.
To achieve the journal's objectives, authors are encouraged to write in a non-technical style, which is understandable to health policy practitioners and specialists from other disciplines and in other countries.