Health for all? Pasts, presents and futures of aspirations for universal healthcare

Kehr, Janina; Muinde, Jacinta Victoria S.; Prince, Ruth J.

doi:10.1016/j.socscimed.2023.115660

Cited by 8 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 62 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…This situation is not at all unique to the Netherlands. New public management measures, state disengagement from healthcare provision and funding, and the active fostering of private endeavours in healthcare funding and delivery have taken place in all European countries during the 2000s (André and Hermann 2009;Maarse 2006;Schmid et al 2010;Kehr, Muinde, and Prince 2023;Eurofound 2011, 5, 11), as well as in the UK (Dowling 2021). One of the most visible indications of the extent of healthcare privatisation in Europe is the growth of a lucrative market for the corporate, for-profit provision of health services (Lethbridge 2013, 14;André and Hermann 2009;Krause and Ezzedine 2023).…”

Section: Context: Public Healthcare In the Netherlandsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…One of the most visible indications of the extent of healthcare privatisation in Europe is the growth of a lucrative market for the corporate, for-profit provision of health services (Lethbridge 2013, 14;André and Hermann 2009;Krause and Ezzedine 2023). This process has affected countries across the European region (Lethbridge 2013;Kehr, Muinde, and Prince 2023). Indeed, several of the practitioners that participated in the presented research complained to me about the ever-growing amount of tech startups that visited hospitals for sales pitches.…”

Section: Context: Public Healthcare In the Netherlandsmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

The Medical Tech Facilitator: An Emerging Position in Dutch Public Healthcare and Their Tinkering Practices

Van Voorst

2024

MAT

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This article focuses on the emerging position of the ‘medical tech facilitator’ developed by practitioners in the Dutch public healthcare system. The analysis is based on anthropological fieldwork conducted in Dutch hospitals. It highlights, firstly, the practices and ongoing negotiations that these facilitators engage in, to maintain a position between two parties—the medical sector and the technology industry. I argue that the practices of medical tech facilitators are not (only) a result of personal, lucrative interests, but should be seen as a pragmatic way of coping, or tinkering, with a healthcare system that is experienced by them as frustrating and inefficient. Secondly, the article reveals the outcomes of these practices for public healthcare. I will pose that this emerging and ambiguous position leads to a co-production of specific health policies—something which is concerning, considering the fact that medical tech facilitators typically lack technological expertise. As such, they both resist and reproduce the problems they experience in their daily work.

show abstract

Section: Context: Public Healthcare In the Netherlandsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Context: Public Healthcare In the Netherlandsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Medical Tech Facilitator: An Emerging Position in Dutch Public Healthcare and Their Tinkering Practices

Van Voorst

2024

MAT

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The goal of expanding health care capacity in resource-poor countries was eclipsed by massive disruptions associated with Cold War politics and the global debt crisis of the 1970s and 1980s, which occurred amid the state-building efforts of newly independent countries in the Global South. These events intersected to disrupt plans for effectively implementing "health for all" (WHO, 1978), and instead, institutionalized health care as a commodity-rather than a right-gained traction (Kehr et al, 2023). Almost immediately following Alma-Ata, the World Bank implemented "selective primary health care" instead (Walsh & Warren, 1979), prioritizing programming that targeted specific diseases rather than primary health care.…”

Section: Background: Community-based Health Care In Senegalmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sanctified suffering and the common good: Translocal health care provisioning in smalltown Senegal

Burgen,

Marten

2024

Economic Anthropology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Senegal has long relied on local communities to expand health services and improve health outcomes for citizens and is internationally lauded for its effectiveness in promoting good health and facilitating local trust. Here we examine how community health care emerges in Keur Toma, a rural Wolof town in the Senegal River Valley that relies on a global network of labor migrants to fuel its remittance‐based economy. Largely through its hometown association and the migrant men abroad who fund it, Keur Toma has built and sustained the local health infrastructure and staffing essential to achieving health care accessibility, providing consistent investment and critical stop‐gap funding when government assistance falters. Following Robbins's call for investigating “an anthropology of the good,” we highlight the deeply rooted sense of care and obligation to kin and community that fosters the translocal ties that make Keur Toma's health care possible in the state's absence. We highlight what Ngom calls “sanctified suffering”—which valorizes personal fortitude and the ability to endure hardships for family and community, shaped by traditions of solidarity, mutual aid, and Islamic morality—and its role in migrants' hometown commitments to building stronger communities.

show abstract

“…This indicates the (lack of) political ambitions surrounding UHC. Although presented as a return to the ambitions of the 1978 Alma Ata Declaration for 'Health for All by the year 2000', UHC is conceived in much narrower terms (Kehr, Muinde and Prince 2023) with its narrow focus on financial coverage and technical reforms.…”

Section: Blurring 'Social Justice' With 'Market Justice'mentioning

confidence: 99%

Blurring ‘social justice’ with ‘market justice’ in recent experiments with healthcare and social protection in the Global South

Prince

2024

Global Social Policy

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

More than three decades after structural adjustment programmes were imposed on governments across the Global South, and amid growing recognition that development has largely failed to address poverty, experiments with expanding forms of welfare and social protection have gathered pace, focusing not only on workers and their families in formal-sector employment but also, in rhetoric at least, on 'all citizens'. Cash transfer programmes, basic income grants, social pensions, and universal health coverage (UHC), have all gained currency in the 21st century. Reconfiguring relations between labour and welfare, these offer 'new visions of social security in a world of precarious work' (Kar, 2017: 12) and a recognition of the state's responsibility (Ferguson, 2015) for those facing a 'wageless life', even while they draw them into financial infrastructures of global capitalism (Nilsen, 2021).A large body of research focuses on cash transfer programmes and their ambitions to alleviate poverty, with heated arguments about their potential to generate new forms of citizenship or merely cement existing inequalities (e.g. Ferguson, 2015;Leisering, 2019;Nilsen, 2021). An arena of social policy generating similar disagreement concerns the expansion of 'universal' social protection in the field of health care. Universal Health Coverage (UHC), defined as 'ensuring that all people can receive the quality health services they need without being exposed to financial hardship' (WHO, 2010), has moved up the policy agenda as arguments for a more comprehensive approach -to invest in public health systems and ensure that the poor are included -have gained currency. Below, I discuss how UHC, like other attempts to introduce a 'thin' form of more universal welfare, remains squarely located within neoliberal social policy. I discuss the policy's focus on expanding health insurance coverage to previously un-insured populations, particularly those who have no formal employment, drawing upon research conducted in Kenya and Tanzania.

show abstract

Health for all? Pasts, presents and futures of aspirations for universal healthcare

Cited by 8 publications

References 62 publications

The Medical Tech Facilitator: An Emerging Position in Dutch Public Healthcare and Their Tinkering Practices

The Medical Tech Facilitator: An Emerging Position in Dutch Public Healthcare and Their Tinkering Practices

Sanctified suffering and the common good: Translocal health care provisioning in smalltown Senegal

Blurring ‘social justice’ with ‘market justice’ in recent experiments with healthcare and social protection in the Global South

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About