Toward Sustainable Transitions in Healthcare Systems

Health systems have long been considered key determinants of well-being within modern societies, a valuable resource which have faced a series of reform initiatives throughout the past decades. These reforms have been used to manage the cost of development, measure the tenability of health systems in globalizing economies and promote the increasing importance of health problems related to lifestyle and living conditions, yet they have failed to provide a true resolution to the persistent economical and logistical problems facing modern-day health systems. This rich, interdisciplinary work explores the hypothesis that many of these problems cannot be adequately addressed without structural changes to our health systems, and examines the embedded features of our health systems that underlie contemporary challenges as well as how, and under what conditions, our health systems can be made more sustainable. Combining and building upon theoretical approaches from transition and innovation studies for analysing health system deficits, Toward Sustainable Transitions in Healthcare Systems raises fundamental questions about how new research, new needs and exogenous trends are transforming current health innovation systems. Providing an original and substantial analysis of the complex structural features of the health innovation system, this book will be of interest to students and practitioners of the politics of health, social epidemiology, medical sociology and those with an interest in transition theory.