Equity of access to health care: outlining the foundations for action

Information, communication and equitable access to health care: a conceptual note

“…Since the early 1970s researchers have engaged with different approaches to access, acknowledging that access to health care is indeed a rather complex concept with several dimensions 8,9,10,11,12,13 . While today there is general consensus that access to health services is a multi-dimensional concept 1,14 , there are different ideas around what these are. There is not just one legitimate conceptual framework focusing on the access dimensions.…”

“…Equitable access has become a popular policy objective and is often interpreted as equal access for equal need 1 . We should always be aware that access, like equity and many other terms in economic and social theory, is neither precisely definable so that it may satisfy people from different ideological backgrounds nor is it measurable in a definite manner, in the way that temperature or weight are measurable.…”

Equity of colorectal cancer screening: which groups have inequitable participation and what can we do about it?

“…For the purposes of this paper, a key distinction needs to be made between a relatively large field of research which defines equity in health (Braveman, 2006;Sen, 2006;Starfield, 2006) and an emerging field of research which defines equity in healthcare (Oliver & Mossialos, 2004;P. Ward, 2009a, b).…”

Cervical cancer screening: barriers to access and potential solutions for Nigeria

“…There is no universally accepted definition of access to health services and utilization is used as a proxy for access in most literature 22 . However, as noted by Peter et al, most authors define access as 'the timely use of service according to need', since most definitions would incorporate the idea of realized need 18 .…”