Overview

A special issue of Health Sociology Review ~ September 2011

Guest edited by:

Fran Collyer, The University of Sydney

Kevin White, The Australian National University

The health care services sector has been radically transformed in most economies since the 1980s. Among the more noticeable changes have been the active encouragement of competition by governments; increasing cost-consciousness on the part of third party payers; the sale or marginalisation of public sector services, and the growth and increasing dominance of health care markets by large, public corporations.

Both the privatisation and the corporatisation of health care represent a response to environmental changes and major environmental changes in and of themselves. Such dramatic changes have impacted in very different ways on both developed and developing economies, though significantly less has been written about the latter and their response to pressures to 'reform' their sectors (such as from transnational corporations and international institutions including the World Bank).

This increasing reliance on markets (to allocate resources) raises a number of issues which are increasingly salient and of interest to academics, researchers, policy-makers and health care practitioners; as evidenced by regional and international attention and publications. Although related papers have previously featured in Health Sociology Review, this special issue is devoted to international, regional and national papers exploring this theme.

Papers submitted by authors across the globe for consideration in this special issue may include, but not be limited to, the following areas:

• comparative or single nation/regional studies illustrating such transformations;
• studies of the factors driving this transformation, lessons to be learned and problems to be avoided;
• threats to public sector health services and associated institutions (such as medical schools);
• analyses of changes in the structure of the health care industry, in the financial, organisational and social arrangements for services, and the potential implications of this re-structure for equity, competition, efficiency, and public policy;
• analyses focusing on the international context, processes of globalisation and commodification;
• studies of the impact of the transformation on the health of populations or population segments, medical professionals, policy-makers and other stakeholders.

Table of Contents