Global medical travel has had an increasing trend without a comprehensive, evidence-driven policy to ensure safe and effective practice. To identify key factors that influence medical travel, a series of studies culminating with a preference and decision-making component of over 500 prospective medical travelers from a number of countries. Results indicated that quality of care was the most critical factor in the decision, followed by lower costs of procedure and shorter waiting times. Lower costs were less of a factor if the procedure was more invasive, which also increased the importance of waiting time in the decision. The most desired destinations for care were in Europe (United Kingdom, Germany) and North America (United States). Building on these insights and previous literature, we present a model that for implementing applications from these factors and additional insights generated across the series of studies toward an effective policy framework.

As the contributions in this special issue show, there are ample examples of teaching programs at the nexus of complexity and public administration and its sub-fields. However, the examples discussed in this issue do not give us an indication of the extent to which complexity theory or the complexity sciences are taught in curricula worldwide. This contribution presents the results of a thorough internet search to identify those academic programs in political science, public administration and business administration, where complexity sciences are taught in conjunction with all matters public. The search across 193 countries led to selection of 108 programs that corresponded to some or all the defined criteria. We will present characteristics of the selected programs regarding quality of fit, level of studies, field of studies, and type of information about the complexity science approach available on the programs’ websites.

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