Ten Articles Inspired By WISH Featured In September Issue of Leading US Health Policy Journal Health Affairs
9 September 2014
Washington DC, USA: Health Affairs has published its September issue on global healthcare policy, featuring 10 articles written by World Innovation Summit for Health (WISH) authors and contributors. WISH is an initiative of Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Community Development (QF).
The launch of the new issue of Health Affairs took place yesterday at the National Press Club in Washington DC, USA, and brought together more than 150 leading figures from around the world, including the US and Qatar, representing academia, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and the media.
Following opening remarks by Mr Alan Weil, Health Affairs’ Editor in Chief, Professor the Lord Darzi of Denham, Executive Chair of WISH and Director of the Institute of Global Health Innovation at Imperial College London, discussed key international health policy issues with Mark McClellan, Director, Initiative of Global Health Innovation at the Brookings Institution, Washington DC. Later in the morning a number of WISH report authors presented their findings on topics ranging from diffusing innovation in global healthcare to health policy and the use of big data.
Health Affairs is the leading journal of health policy thought and research, focusing on policy issues at a local, regional and international level. The journal promotes analysis and facilitates ongoing discussions on ways to improve health and healthcare issues.
The September issue of Health Affairs features 10 articles inspired by WISH and its partners about the following key global healthcare issues:
- Challenges in Adapting International Best Practices in Cancer Prevention, Care, and Research for Qatar
- Accountable Care Around The World: A Framework To Guide Reform Strategies and To Achieve Progress
- Antimicrobial Resistance: Addressing The Global Threat Through Greater Awareness And Transformative Action
- How Google’s ‘Ten Things We Know To Be True’ Could Guide The Development Of Mental Health Mobile Apps
- Policy Actions To Achieve Integrated Community-Based Mental Health Services
- Innovation Can Improve And Expand Aspects Of End-Of-Life-Care In Low And Middle-Income Countries
- Patient Engagement: Four Case Studies That Highlight The Potential For Improved Health Outcomes And Reduced Costs
- Revolutionizing Medicine and Public Health Strategic Action to Combat the Obesity Epidemic
- Developing Public Policy To Advance The Use Of Big Data In Health Care
- Lessons from Eight Countries on Diffusing Innovation In Health Care
Engineer Saad Al Muhannadi, President of Qatar Foundation, said: “Health Affairs’ inclusion of 10 articles written by WISH authors and contributors in its latest issue demonstrates the progress made by Qatar and Qatar Foundation in becoming a key influence for change in the global healthcare sphere. The high quality and original work of the papers being published by Health Affairs signal that WISH is on the right track in addressing some of the most pressing healthcare challenges seen across the world today.”
Lord Darzi added: “Collaboration underpins everything we do at WISH – this is an excellent example of how our global community of healthcare experts supports the spread of new ideas by sharing high quality content and research.
“Each of the articles included by Health Affairs share a common theme – action focused best practice but realistic approaches that can facilitate practical improvements in healthcare provision in areas ranging from cancer care in the Arabian Gulf to the development of mobile technology to improve mental health. It also demonstrates the breadth and lasting value of our activities – WISH is not just an annual summit but a living, dynamic community with global reach that is using evidence-based research to make a real difference. This edition of Health Affairs will make our work easily accessible and readily available to healthcare professionals across the world.”
Mr Weil said: “Policy makers in the US and the rest of the world are currently facing a range of complex health challenges, from rising incidences of cancer to increasing Antimicrobial Resistance. To ensure that public policy is effective in addressing and solving these problems, evidence, research and analysis must play a central role. The research papers being published this month inspired by the World Innovation Summit for Health and discussed today in Washington DC, cover ten important global healthcare issues and bring together international experts and evidence from across the world. We believe the global perspective on these issues will provide policy makers in the US and beyond with a unique and significant resource of high quality research and information.”
WISH’s special contribution to the latest Health Affairs journal reflects its increasingly prominent role in bringing together leading innovators in healthcare policy, research and industry, and providing evidence-based research to address pressing global health challenges. The second World Innovation Summit for Health (WISH) will take place on 17-18 February 2015 in Doha, Qatar.
WISH, an initiative of Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Community Development (QF), inspires and diffuses healthcare innovation and best practice through a global network of high-level policymakers, academics and industry leaders. It remains closely aligned to the vision and mission of QF to unlock human potential and serve to underscore Qatar’s pioneering role as an emerging centre for healthcare innovation.
For more information about WISH and the 2015 Summit, please visit wish.org.qa.
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Notes to Editors
For more information please contact:
Noha El Afify
WISH Communications Manager
nelafify@wish.org.qa
+974 7768 6624
About the World Innovation Summit for Health:
The World Innovation Summit for Health (WISH) is a global healthcare community dedicated to capturing and disseminating the best evidence-based ideas and practices. WISH is an initiative of Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Community Development (QF) and is under the patronage of Her Highness Sheikha Moza bint Nasser, its Chairperson.
Inaugural WISH Summit took place in Doha in 2013 and convened more than 1,000 global healthcare leaders. Through annual Summits and a range of ongoing initiatives, WISH is creating a global community of leading innovators in healthcare policy, research and industry.
Together, they are harnessing the power of innovation to overcome the world’s most urgent healthcare challenges and inspire other stakeholders to action.
About Health Affairs:
Health Affairs is the leading journal of health policy thought and research. The peer-reviewed journal was founded in 1981 under the aegis of Project HOPE, a non-profit international health education organization. Health Affairs explores health policy issues of current concern in domestic and international spheres. Its mission is to serve as a high-level, nonpartisan forum to promote analysis and discussion on improving health and health care, and to address such issues as cost, quality, and access.
The journal reaches a broad audience that includes: government and health industry leaders; health care advocates; scholars of health, health care and health policy; and others concerned with health and health care issues in the United States and worldwide.
Abstracts from the ten WISH articles published in Health Affairs:
Accountable Care Around The World: A Framework To Guide Reform Strategies
ABSTRACT Accountable care—a way to align health care payments with patient-focused reform goals—is currently being pursued in the United States, but its principles are also being applied in many other countries. In this article we review experiences with such reforms to offer a globally applicable definition of an accountable care system and propose a conceptual framework for characterizing and assessing accountable care reforms. The framework consists of five components: population, outcomes, metrics and learning, payments and incentives, and coordinated delivery. We describe how the framework applies to accountable care reforms that are already being implemented in Spain and Singapore. We also describe how it can be used to map progress through increasingly sophisticated levels of reforms. We recommend that policy makers pursuing accountable care reforms emphasize the following steps: highlight population health and wellness instead of just treating illness; pay for outcomes instead of activities; create a more favorable environment for collaboration and coordinated care; and promote interoperable data systems.
http://content.healthaffairs.org/content/33/9/1507.abstract
Social Networking Strategies That Aim To Reduce Obesity Have Achieved Significant Although Modest Results
ABSTRACTThe global epidemic of obesity continues to escalate. Obesity accounts for an increasing proportion of the international socioeconomic burden of non-communicable disease. Online social networking services provide an effective medium through which information may be exchanged between obese and overweight patients and their health care providers, potentially contributing to superior weight-loss outcomes. We performed a systematic review and meta-analysis to assess the role of these services in modifying body mass index (BMI). Our analysis of twelve studies found that interventions using social networking services produced a modest but significant 0.64 percent reduction in BMI from baseline for the 941 people who participated in the studies’ interventions. We recommend that social networking services that target obesity should be the subject of further clinical trials. Additionally, we recommend that policy makers adopt reforms that promote the use of anti-obesity social networking services, facilitate multi-stakeholder partnerships in such services, and create a supportive environment to confront obesity and its associated non-communicable diseases.
http://content.healthaffairs.org/content/33/9/1641.abstract
How Google’s ‘Ten Things We Know To Be True’ Could Guide The Development Of Mental Health Mobile Apps
ABSTRACT From 2011 to 2030, mental health conditions are projected to cost the global economy $16 trillion through lost labor and capital output. The gold standard of psychological interventions, one-on-one therapy, is too costly and too labor-intensive to keep up with the projected growth in demand for mental health services. Therefore, new solutions are needed to improve the efficiency of mental health care delivery and to increase patient self-care. Because 85 percent of the world’s population has wireless signal coverage, there is an unprecedented opportunity for mobile technologies to incorporate psychological self-care into people’s daily lives and relieve workforce shortages. In this article, we suggest that policy makers look to technology innovators for guidance. For example, Google’s principles, called “Ten Things We Know To Be True,” are useful for understanding the drivers of success in mobile technologies. For principles such as “focus on the user and all else will follow,” we identify examples of how evidence-based mobile mental health technologies could increase patient self-care and reduce the demand for one-on-one psychological intervention.
http://content.healthaffairs.org/content/33/9/1603.abstract
Developing Public Policy To Advance The Use Of Big Data In Health Care
ABSTRACT The vast amount of health data generated and stored around the world each day offers significant opportunities for advances such as the real-time tracking of diseases, predicting disease outbreaks, and developing health care that is truly personalized. However, capturing, analyzing, and sharing health data is difficult, expensive, and controversial. This article explores four central questions that policy makers should consider when developing public policy for the use of “big data” in health care. We discuss what aspects of big data are most relevant for health care and present a taxonomy of data types and levels of access. We suggest that successful policies require clear objectives and provide examples, discuss barriers to achieving policy objectives based on a recent policy experiment in the United Kingdom, and propose levers that policy makers should consider using to advance data sharing. We argue that the case for data sharing can be won only by providing real life examples of the ways in which it can improve health care.
http://content.healthaffairs.org/content/33/9/1523.abstract
Antimicrobial Resistance: Addressing The Global Threat Through Greater Awareness And Transformative Action
ABSTRACT Antimicrobial therapies have played an unquestionably important role in advancing modern medical and surgical care, treating animals, reducing the global burden of communicable disease, and prolonging human life expectancy. These transformational benefits are threatened because of the rapidly advancing phenomenon of antimicrobial resistance. As a result of complex factors across many sectors and international actors, the global impact of antimicrobial resistance is an escalating economic and health crisis. This article draws on the collective expertise and summit report of the Antimicrobial Resistance Working Group from the 2013 World Innovation Summit for Health, in Doha, Qatar. It defines a framework of principles and tasks for key policy makers to raise international awareness of antimicrobial resistance and lead transformative action through policy-driven improvements in sanitation, antimicrobial conservation, agricultural practices, and research and development.
http://content.healthaffairs.org/content/33/9/1620.abstract
Lessons from Eight Countries on Diffusing Innovation In Health Care
ABSTRACT Health care systems are under increasing pressure to cope with shifting demographics, the threat of chronic and non-communicable disease, and rising health care costs. The uptake of innovations to meet these challenges and to advance medicine and health care delivery is not as rapid as the pace of change. Greater emphasis on the diffusion of innovation and greater understanding of the structural and organizational levers that can be used to facilitate system-wide improvement are essential. This article describes the results of a qualitative and quantitative study to assess the factors and behaviors that foster the adoption of health care innovation in eight countries: Australia, Brazil, England, India, Qatar, South Africa, Spain, and the United States. It describes the front-line cultural dynamics that must be fostered to achieve cost-effective and high-impact transformation of health care, and it argues that there is a necessity for greater focus on vital, yet currently underused, organizational action to support the adoption of innovation.
http://content.healthaffairs.org/content/33/9/1516.abstract
Challenges in Adapting International Best Practices in Cancer Prevention, Care, and Research for Qatar
ABSTRACT The World Health Organization recommends that all countries develop a cancer control program. Qatar is the first country in the Gulf Cooperation Council to develop such a plan, with its National Cancer Strategy 2011–2016. Three years into implementation, meaningful progress has been made, particularly in reducing patient waiting times, creating a multidisciplinary approach to cancer treatment, and fostering international research collaboration. Challenges include attracting sufficient numbers of trained health care workers, reaching a diverse population with messages tailored to their needs, and emphasizing cancer prevention and early detection in addition to research and treatment. Qatar’s example shows that best practices developed in North America, Western Europe, and Australasia can be assimilated in a very different demographic and cultural context when such approaches are tailored to local characteristics and circumstances.
http://content.healthaffairs.org/content/33/9/1635.abstractbr />
Policy Actions To Achieve Integrated Community-Based Mental Health Services
ABSTRACT Globally, the majority of people with mental health problems do not receive evidence-based interventions that can transform their lives. We describe six mental health policy actions adopted at the World Innovation Summit for Health in 2013. For each policy action, we offer real-world examples of mental health innovations that governments and health care providers can implement to move toward universal health coverage for mental health. The six policy actions are empowering people with mental health problems and their families, building a diverse mental health workforce, developing collaborative and multidisciplinary mental health teams, using technology to increase access to mental health care, identifying and treating mental health problems early, and reducing premature mortality in people with mental health problems. Challenges to implementing these policy actions include the lack of recognition of mental health as a global health priority and the resulting lack of investment in mental health, the difficulties of integrating mental health into primary care health services because of a scarcity of human and financial resources, and the lack of evidence on the effectiveness and costs of taking innovations to a national scale.
http://content.healthaffairs.org/content/33/9/1595.abstract
Innovation Can Improve And Expand Aspects Of End-Of-Life-Care In Low And Middle-Income Countries
ABSTRACT Provision for end-of-life care around the world is widely variable and often poor, which leads to millions of deaths each year among people without access to essential aspects of care. However, some low- and middle-income countries have improved specific aspects of end-of-life care using innovative strategies and approaches such as international partnerships, community-based programs, and philanthropic initiatives. This article reviews the state of current global end-of-life care and examines how innovation has improved end-of-life care in Nigeria, Uganda, India, Bangladesh, Myanmar, and Jordan. Specifically, we examine how opioids have been made more available for the treatment of pain, and how training and education programs have expanded the provision of care to the dying population. Finally, we recommend actions that policy makers and individuals can take to improve end-of-life care, regardless of the income level in a country.
http://content.healthaffairs.org/content/33/9/1612.abstract
Patient Engagement: Four Case Studies That Highlight The Potential For Improved Health Outcomes And Reduced Costs
ABSTRACT The energy of patients and members of the public worldwide who care about improving health is a huge, but still largely unrecognized and untapped, resource. The aim of patient engagement is to shift the clinical paradigm from determining “what is the matter?” to discovering “what matters to you?” This article presents four case studies from around the world that highlight the proven and potential abilities of increased patient engagement to improve health outcomes and reduce costs, while extending the reach of treatment and diagnostic programs into the community. The cases are an online mental health community in the United Kingdom, a genetic screening program in the United Arab Emirates, a World Health Organization checklist for new mothers, and a hospital-based patient engagement initiative in the United States. Evidence from these and similar endeavors suggests that closer collaboration on the part of patients, families, health care providers, health care systems, and policy makers at multiple levels could help diverse nations provide more effective and population-appropriate health care with fewer resources.
http://content.healthaffairs.org/content/33/9/1627.abstract
Qatar Foundation – Unlocking Human Potential
Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Community Development is a private, non-profit organisation that is supporting Qatar on its journey from a carbon economy to knowledge economy by unlocking human potential for the benefit of not only Qatar, but the world. Founded in 1995 by His Highness the Father Emir Sheikh Hamad Bin Khalifa Al Thani, QF is chaired by Her Highness Sheikha Moza bint Nasser. QF carries out its mission through three strategic pillars: education, science and research, and community development. QF’s education pillar brings world-class universities to Qatar to help create an education sector in which young people can develop the attitudes and skills required for a knowledge economy. Meanwhile, its science and research pillar builds Qatar’s innovation and technology capacity by developing and commercialising solutions through key sciences. Finally, its community development pillar helps foster a progressive society while also enhancing cultural life, protecting Qatar’s heritage and addressing immediate social needs in the community.
For a complete list of QF’s initiatives and projects, visit http://www.qf.org.qa
For more information about Qatar Foundation please contact our press office at: pressoffice@qf.org.qa
