Health Status
The level of health of the individual, group, or population as subjectively assessed by the individual or by more objective measures.
Delivery of Health Care
The concept concerned with all aspects of providing and distributing health services to a patient population.
Public Health
Branch of medicine concerned with the prevention and control of disease and disability, and the promotion of physical and mental health of the population on the international, national, state, or municipal level.
Drug Delivery Systems
Health Policy
Decisions, usually developed by government policymakers, for determining present and future objectives pertaining to the health care system.
Health Care Reform
Innovation and improvement of the health care system by reappraisal, amendment of services, and removal of faults and abuses in providing and distributing health services to patients. It includes a re-alignment of health services and health insurance to maximum demographic elements (the unemployed, indigent, uninsured, elderly, inner cities, rural areas) with reference to coverage, hospitalization, pricing and cost containment, insurers' and employers' costs, pre-existing medical conditions, prescribed drugs, equipment, and services.
Health Surveys
A systematic collection of factual data pertaining to health and disease in a human population within a given geographic area.
Health Promotion
Delivery, Obstetric
Delivery of the FETUS and PLACENTA under the care of an obstetrician or a health worker. Obstetric deliveries may involve physical, psychological, medical, or surgical interventions.
Health Services Accessibility
The degree to which individuals are inhibited or facilitated in their ability to gain entry to and to receive care and services from the health care system. Factors influencing this ability include geographic, architectural, transportational, and financial considerations, among others.
Health Care Surveys
Statistical measures of utilization and other aspects of the provision of health care services including hospitalization and ambulatory care.
Attitude to Health
Public attitudes toward health, disease, and the medical care system.
Health Planning
Planning for needed health and/or welfare services and facilities.
Primary Health Care
Quality of Health Care
Health Behavior
Behaviors expressed by individuals to protect, maintain or promote their health status. For example, proper diet, and appropriate exercise are activities perceived to influence health status. Life style is closely associated with health behavior and factors influencing life style are socioeconomic, educational, and cultural.
Health Services
Services for the diagnosis and treatment of disease and the maintenance of health.
Insurance, Health
Health Personnel
Men and women working in the provision of health services, whether as individual practitioners or employees of health institutions and programs, whether or not professionally trained, and whether or not subject to public regulation. (From A Discursive Dictionary of Health Care, 1976)
World Health
The concept pertaining to the health status of inhabitants of the world.
Health Services Needs and Demand
Health services required by a population or community as well as the health services that the population or community is able and willing to pay for.
Health Education
Education that increases the awareness and favorably influences the attitudes and knowledge relating to the improvement of health on a personal or community basis.
Oral Health
Health Services Research
The integration of epidemiologic, sociological, economic, and other analytic sciences in the study of health services. Health services research is usually concerned with relationships between need, demand, supply, use, and outcome of health services. The aim of the research is evaluation, particularly in terms of structure, process, output, and outcome. (From Last, Dictionary of Epidemiology, 2d ed)
Delivery of Health Care, Integrated
A health care system which combines physicians, hospitals, and other medical services with a health plan to provide the complete spectrum of medical care for its customers. In a fully integrated system, the three key elements - physicians, hospital, and health plan membership - are in balance in terms of matching medical resources with the needs of purchasers and patients. (Coddington et al., Integrated Health Care: Reorganizing the Physician, Hospital and Health Plan Relationship, 1994, p7)
Health Expenditures
Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice
Knowledge, attitudes, and associated behaviors which pertain to health-related topics such as PATHOLOGIC PROCESSES or diseases, their prevention, and treatment. This term refers to non-health workers and health workers (HEALTH PERSONNEL).
Public Health Administration
Management of public health organizations or agencies.
Environmental Health
The science of controlling or modifying those conditions, influences, or forces surrounding man which relate to promoting, establishing, and maintaining health.
Patient Acceptance of Health Care
The seeking and acceptance by patients of health service.
Health Status Disparities
Occupational Health
The promotion and maintenance of physical and mental health in the work environment.
Health Care Rationing
Planning for the equitable allocation, apportionment, or distribution of available health resources.
National Health Programs
Health Priorities
Preferentially rated health-related activities or functions to be used in establishing health planning goals. This may refer specifically to PL93-641.
Public Health Practice
The activities and endeavors of the public health services in a community on any level.
Mental Health Services
Organized services to provide mental health care.
Rural Health
The status of health in rural populations.
Health Care Sector
Economic sector concerned with the provision, distribution, and consumption of health care services and related products.
Community Health Services
Pregnancy
Attitude of Health Personnel
Urban Health
The status of health in urban populations.
Health Literacy
Child Health Services
Organized services to provide health care for children.
World Health Organization
Rural Health Services
Outcome Assessment (Health Care)
Community Health Planning
Planning that has the goals of improving health, improving accessibility to health services, and promoting efficiency in the provision of services and resources on a comprehensive basis for a whole community. (From Facts on File Dictionary of Health Care Management, 1988, p299)
Socioeconomic Factors
Regional Health Planning
Planning for health resources at a regional or multi-state level.
Health Manpower
The availability of HEALTH PERSONNEL. It includes the demand and recruitment of both professional and allied health personnel, their present and future supply and distribution, and their assignment and utilization.
Maternal Health Services
Organized services to provide health care to expectant and nursing mothers.
Quality Assurance, Health Care
Activities and programs intended to assure or improve the quality of care in either a defined medical setting or a program. The concept includes the assessment or evaluation of the quality of care; identification of problems or shortcomings in the delivery of care; designing activities to overcome these deficiencies; and follow-up monitoring to ensure effectiveness of corrective steps.
Cross-Sectional Studies
Studies in which the presence or absence of disease or other health-related variables are determined in each member of the study population or in a representative sample at one particular time. This contrasts with LONGITUDINAL STUDIES which are followed over a period of time.
Health Resources
Available manpower, facilities, revenue, equipment, and supplies to produce requisite health care and services.
Community Health Centers
Facilities which administer the delivery of health care services to people living in a community or neighborhood.
Preventive Health Services
Services designed for HEALTH PROMOTION and prevention of disease.
Drug Carriers
Forms to which substances are incorporated to improve the delivery and the effectiveness of drugs. Drug carriers are used in drug-delivery systems such as the controlled-release technology to prolong in vivo drug actions, decrease drug metabolism, and reduce drug toxicity. Carriers are also used in designs to increase the effectiveness of drug delivery to the target sites of pharmacological actions. Liposomes, albumin microspheres, soluble synthetic polymers, DNA complexes, protein-drug conjugates, and carrier erythrocytes among others have been employed as biodegradable drug carriers.
Public Health Nursing
A nursing specialty concerned with promoting and protecting the health of populations, using knowledge from nursing, social, and public health sciences to develop local, regional, state, and national health policy and research. It is population-focused and community-oriented, aimed at health promotion and disease prevention through educational, diagnostic, and preventive programs.
Health Occupations
Professions or other business activities directed to the cure and prevention of disease. For occupations of medical personnel who are not physicians but who are working in the fields of medical technology, physical therapy, etc., ALLIED HEALTH OCCUPATIONS is available.
Electronic Health Records
Media that facilitate transportability of pertinent information concerning patient's illness across varied providers and geographic locations. Some versions include direct linkages to online consumer health information that is relevant to the health conditions and treatments related to a specific patient.
Health Benefit Plans, Employee
Occupational Health Services
Health Services Administration
Interviews as Topic
Nanoparticles
Nanometer-sized particles that are nanoscale in three dimensions. They include nanocrystaline materials; NANOCAPSULES; METAL NANOPARTICLES; DENDRIMERS, and QUANTUM DOTS. The uses of nanoparticles include DRUG DELIVERY SYSTEMS and cancer targeting and imaging.
Health Services for the Aged
Services for the diagnosis and treatment of diseases in the aged and the maintenance of health in the elderly.
Gene Transfer Techniques
The introduction of functional (usually cloned) GENES into cells. A variety of techniques and naturally occurring processes are used for the gene transfer such as cell hybridization, LIPOSOMES or microcell-mediated gene transfer, ELECTROPORATION, chromosome-mediated gene transfer, TRANSFECTION, and GENETIC TRANSDUCTION. Gene transfer may result in genetically transformed cells and individual organisms.
Health Plan Implementation
Those actions designed to carry out recommendations pertaining to health plans or programs.
State Health Plans
State plans prepared by the State Health Planning and Development Agencies which are made up from plans submitted by the Health Systems Agencies and subject to review and revision by the Statewide Health Coordinating Council.
Public Health Informatics
Quality Indicators, Health Care
Norms, criteria, standards, and other direct qualitative and quantitative measures used in determining the quality of health care.
National Institutes of Health (U.S.)
An operating division of the US Department of Health and Human Services. It is concerned with the overall planning, promoting, and administering of programs pertaining to health and medical research. Until 1995, it was an agency of the United States PUBLIC HEALTH SERVICE.
Prevalence
Women's Health Services
Health Services, Indigenous
Reproductive Health Services
Program Evaluation
Outcome and Process Assessment (Health Care)
Health Maintenance Organizations
Organized systems for providing comprehensive prepaid health care that have five basic attributes: (1) provide care in a defined geographic area; (2) provide or ensure delivery of an agreed-upon set of basic and supplemental health maintenance and treatment services; (3) provide care to a voluntarily enrolled group of persons; (4) require their enrollees to use the services of designated providers; and (5) receive reimbursement through a predetermined, fixed, periodic prepayment made by the enrollee without regard to the degree of services provided. (From Facts on File Dictionary of Health Care Management, 1988)
Catchment Area (Health)
A geographic area defined and served by a health program or institution.
Health Care Coalitions
Voluntary groups of people representing diverse interests in the community such as hospitals, businesses, physicians, and insurers, with the principal objective to improve health care cost effectiveness.
Health Planning Guidelines
Recommendations for directing health planning functions and policies. These may be mandated by PL93-641 and issued by the Department of Health and Human Services for use by state and local planning agencies.
Logistic Models
Statistical models which describe the relationship between a qualitative dependent variable (that is, one which can take only certain discrete values, such as the presence or absence of a disease) and an independent variable. A common application is in epidemiology for estimating an individual's risk (probability of a disease) as a function of a given risk factor.
Health Records, Personal
Longitudinal patient-maintained records of individual health history and tools that allow individual control of access.
Urban Health Services
Poverty
Mental Disorders
Allied Health Personnel
Health care workers specially trained and licensed to assist and support the work of health professionals. Often used synonymously with paramedical personnel, the term generally refers to all health care workers who perform tasks which must otherwise be performed by a physician or other health professional.
Questionnaires
Family Health
The health status of the family as a unit including the impact of the health of one member of the family on the family as a unit and on individual family members; also, the impact of family organization or disorganization on the health status of its members.
Adolescent Health Services
Organized services to provide health care to adolescents, ages ranging from 13 through 18 years.
Health Planning Support
Financial resources provided for activities related to health planning and development.
Quality of Life
Social Justice
Community Mental Health Services
Population Surveillance
Schools, Public Health
Educational institutions for individuals specializing in the field of public health.
Comprehensive Health Care
Policy Making
Qualitative Research
Age Factors
Age as a constituent element or influence contributing to the production of a result. It may be applicable to the cause or the effect of a circumstance. It is used with human or animal concepts but should be differentiated from AGING, a physiological process, and TIME FACTORS which refers only to the passage of time.
School Health Services
Preventive health services provided for students. It excludes college or university students.
Cohort Studies
Studies in which subsets of a defined population are identified. These groups may or may not be exposed to factors hypothesized to influence the probability of the occurrence of a particular disease or other outcome. Cohorts are defined populations which, as a whole, are followed in an attempt to determine distinguishing subgroup characteristics.
Genetic Therapy
United States Dept. of Health and Human Services
A cabinet department in the Executive Branch of the United States Government concerned with administering those agencies and offices having programs pertaining to health and human services.
Needs Assessment
Prospective Studies
Pregnancy Outcome
Results of conception and ensuing pregnancy, including LIVE BIRTH; STILLBIRTH; SPONTANEOUS ABORTION; INDUCED ABORTION. The outcome may follow natural or artificial insemination or any of the various ASSISTED REPRODUCTIVE TECHNIQUES, such as EMBRYO TRANSFER or FERTILIZATION IN VITRO.
Marketing of Health Services
Application of marketing principles and techniques to maximize the use of health care resources.
Genetic Vectors
DNA molecules capable of autonomous replication within a host cell and into which other DNA sequences can be inserted and thus amplified. Many are derived from PLASMIDS; BACTERIOPHAGES; or VIRUSES. They are used for transporting foreign genes into recipient cells. Genetic vectors possess a functional replicator site and contain GENETIC MARKERS to facilitate their selective recognition.
Chronic Disease
Diseases which have one or more of the following characteristics: they are permanent, leave residual disability, are caused by nonreversible pathological alteration, require special training of the patient for rehabilitation, or may be expected to require a long period of supervision, observation, or care. (Dictionary of Health Services Management, 2d ed)
Private Sector
Health Fairs
Community health education events focused on prevention of disease and promotion of health through audiovisual exhibits.
Sex Factors
Maleness or femaleness as a constituent element or influence contributing to the production of a result. It may be applicable to the cause or effect of a circumstance. It is used with human or animal concepts but should be differentiated from SEX CHARACTERISTICS, anatomical or physiological manifestations of sex, and from SEX DISTRIBUTION, the number of males and females in given circumstances.
Program Development
The process of formulating, improving, and expanding educational, managerial, or service-oriented work plans (excluding computer program development).
Maternal-Child Health Centers
Facilities which administer the delivery of health care services to mothers and children.
Health Food
Social Class
A stratum of people with similar position and prestige; includes social stratification. Social class is measured by criteria such as education, occupation, and income.
Longitudinal Studies
Insurance Coverage
Generally refers to the amount of protection available and the kind of loss which would be paid for under an insurance contract with an insurer. (Slee & Slee, Health Care Terms, 2d ed)
Health Communication
The transfer of information from experts in the medical and public health fields to patients and the public. The study and use of communication strategies to inform and influence individual and community decisions that enhance health.
United States Public Health Service
Dental Health Services
Services designed to promote, maintain, or restore dental health.
International Cooperation
Organizational Objectives
Interinstitutional Relations
Organizational Case Studies
Descriptions and evaluations of specific health care organizations.
Insurance, Health, Reimbursement
Payment by a third-party payer in a sum equal to the amount expended by a health care provider or facility for health services rendered to an insured or program beneficiary. (From Facts on File Dictionary of Health Care Management, 1988)
Cost-Benefit Analysis
A method of comparing the cost of a program with its expected benefits in dollars (or other currency). The benefit-to-cost ratio is a measure of total return expected per unit of money spent. This analysis generally excludes consideration of factors that are not measured ultimately in economic terms. Cost effectiveness compares alternative ways to achieve a specific set of results.
Prepaid Health Plans
Contracts between an insurer and a subscriber or a group of subscribers whereby a specified set of health benefits is provided in return for a periodic premium.
Residence Characteristics
Elements of residence that characterize a population. They are applicable in determining need for and utilization of health services.
Public Policy
Pregnancy Complications
Maternal Welfare
Organized efforts by communities or organizations to improve the health and well-being of the mother.
Health Transition
Demographic and epidemiologic changes that have occurred in the last five decades in many developing countries and that are characterized by major growth in the number and proportion of middle-aged and elderly persons and in the frequency of the diseases that occur in these age groups. The health transition is the result of efforts to improve maternal and child health via primary care and outreach services and such efforts have been responsible for a decrease in the birth rate; reduced maternal mortality; improved preventive services; reduced infant mortality, and the increased life expectancy that defines the transition. (From Ann Intern Med 1992 Mar 15;116(6):499-504)
Obstetric Labor Complications
Health Planning Councils
Organized groups serving in advisory capacities related to health planning activities.
Universal Coverage
Health insurance coverage for all persons in a state or country, rather than for some subset of the population. It may extend to the unemployed as well as to the employed; to aliens as well as to citizens; for pre-existing conditions as well as for current illnesses; for mental as well as for physical conditions.
Australia
Cooperative Behavior
Government Agencies
Administrative units of government responsible for policy making and management of governmental activities.
Retrospective Studies
Studies used to test etiologic hypotheses in which inferences about an exposure to putative causal factors are derived from data relating to characteristics of persons under study or to events or experiences in their past. The essential feature is that some of the persons under study have the disease or outcome of interest and their characteristics are compared with those of unaffected persons.
Patient Satisfaction
The degree to which the individual regards the health care service or product or the manner in which it is delivered by the provider as useful, effective, or beneficial.
Education, Public Health Professional
Education and training in PUBLIC HEALTH for the practice of the profession.
Regression Analysis
Procedures for finding the mathematical function which best describes the relationship between a dependent variable and one or more independent variables. In linear regression (see LINEAR MODELS) the relationship is constrained to be a straight line and LEAST-SQUARES ANALYSIS is used to determine the best fit. In logistic regression (see LOGISTIC MODELS) the dependent variable is qualitative rather than continuously variable and LIKELIHOOD FUNCTIONS are used to find the best relationship. In multiple regression, the dependent variable is considered to depend on more than a single independent variable.
Pilot Projects
State Medicine
A system of medical care regulated, controlled and financed by the government, in which the government assumes responsibility for the health needs of the population.
Social Support
Support systems that provide assistance and encouragement to individuals with physical or emotional disabilities in order that they may better cope. Informal social support is usually provided by friends, relatives, or peers, while formal assistance is provided by churches, groups, etc.
Social Determinants of Health
The circumstances in which people are born, grow up, live, work, and age, as well as the systems put in place to deal with illness. These circumstances are in turn shaped by a wider set of forces: economics, social policies, and politics (http://www.cdc.gov/socialdeterminants/).
Treatment Outcome
Managed Care Programs
Health insurance plans intended to reduce unnecessary health care costs through a variety of mechanisms, including: economic incentives for physicians and patients to select less costly forms of care; programs for reviewing the medical necessity of specific services; increased beneficiary cost sharing; controls on inpatient admissions and lengths of stay; the establishment of cost-sharing incentives for outpatient surgery; selective contracting with health care providers; and the intensive management of high-cost health care cases. The programs may be provided in a variety of settings, such as HEALTH MAINTENANCE ORGANIZATIONS and PREFERRED PROVIDER ORGANIZATIONS.
Holistic Health
Ethnic Groups
Follow-Up Studies
Health Facility Administration
Management of the organization of HEALTH FACILITIES.
Medical Informatics
The field of information science concerned with the analysis and dissemination of medical data through the application of computers to various aspects of health care and medicine.
Obstetric Labor, Premature
Onset of OBSTETRIC LABOR before term (TERM BIRTH) but usually after the FETUS has become viable. In humans, it occurs sometime during the 29th through 38th week of PREGNANCY. TOCOLYSIS inhibits premature labor and can prevent the BIRTH of premature infants (INFANT, PREMATURE).
Medically Uninsured
Individuals or groups with no or inadequate health insurance coverage. Those falling into this category usually comprise three primary groups: the medically indigent (MEDICAL INDIGENCY); those whose clinical condition makes them medically uninsurable; and the working uninsured.
Social Responsibility
Dental Health Surveys
A systematic collection of factual data pertaining to dental or oral health and disease in a human population within a given geographic area.
Demography
Financing, Personal
Payment by individuals or their family for health care services which are not covered by a third-party payer, either insurance or medical assistance.
Neoplasms
Polymers
Patient Education as Topic
The teaching or training of patients concerning their own health needs.