PLoS medicine
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Jennifer Prah Ruger argues for a more multidemensional assessment of financial protection in health, which can better capture health expenditures and the full burden of health cost burdens.
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Unni Karunakara and Frances Stevenson argue that humanitarian policy and practice must adapt to ensure that the needs of older people in humanitarian emergencies are addressed.
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Peter Bloland and colleagues from the US CDC lay out the agency's priorities for health systems strengthening efforts.
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In successfully negotiating the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), the World Health Organization (WHO) has led a significant innovation in global health governance, helping to transform international tobacco control. This article provides the first comprehensive review of the diverse campaign initiated by transnational tobacco corporations (TTCs) to try to undermine the proposed convention. ⋯ TTCs' efforts to undermine the FCTC were comprehensive, demonstrating the global application of tactics that TTCs have previously been found to have employed nationally and further included arguments against the FCTC as a key initiative in global health governance. Awareness of these strategies can help guard against industry efforts to disrupt the implementation of the FCTC and support the development of future, comparable initiatives in global health.
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Review Meta Analysis
How does medical device regulation perform in the United States and the European union? A systematic review.
Policymakers and regulators in the United States (US) and the European Union (EU) are weighing reforms to their medical device approval and post-market surveillance systems. Data may be available that identify strengths and weakness of the approaches to medical device regulation in these settings. ⋯ Few studies have quantitatively assessed medical device regulation in either the US or EU. Existing studies of US and EU device approval and post-market evaluation performance suggest that policy reforms are necessary for both systems, including improving classification of devices in the US and promoting transparency and post-market oversight in the EU. Assessment of regulatory performance in both settings is limited by lack of data on post-approval safety outcomes. Changes to these device approval and post-marketing systems must be accompanied by ongoing research to ensure that there is better assessment of what works in either setting.