Cam Donaldson – författare

Health systems across the world face multiple pressures. Input costs are soaring, systems are struggling to keep up with increasing demand for their services and areas of the world still lack universal health coverage. All of this whilst health inequalities between the best and worst-off within countries persist and, in some countries, are even widening. There is a need to think of new initiatives in response to these global health challenges. One such response is social finance.

Social finance is about creating social returns. This innovative and rapidly growing sector promotes new ways of banking and funding social and public services. However, social finance has an under-recognised, and potentially underexploited, role in responding to specific aspects of global health challenges: funding and facilitating access to health(care) services and acting on health. The objectives of this book are to conceptualise and evidence different forms of social finance - microfinance and impact bonds - acting in these ways and to critically engage with current debates and challenges. With such evidence to hand, we can either avoid adoption of new trends in financing public services or, more hopefully, attract greater policy support and resources for new tools for public health and in supporting more precarious, but potentially essential, parts of the finance sector.

This book will be essential reading to students, researchers, policymakers and the general public alike who are interested in, or who work in, and across, health systems and social finance.

Health systems across the world face multiple pressures. Input costs are soaring, systems are struggling to keep up with increasing demand for their services and areas of the world still lack universal health coverage. All of this whilst health inequalities between the best and worst-off within countries persist and, in some countries, are even widening. There is a need to think of new initiatives in response to these global health challenges. One such response is social finance.

Social finance is about creating social returns. This innovative and rapidly growing sector promotes new ways of banking and funding social and public services. However, social finance has an under-recognised, and potentially underexploited, role in responding to specific aspects of global health challenges: funding and facilitating access to health(care) services and acting on health. The objectives of this book are to conceptualise and evidence different forms of social finance - microfinance and impact bonds - acting in these ways and to critically engage with current debates and challenges. With such evidence to hand, we can either avoid adoption of new trends in financing public services or, more hopefully, attract greater policy support and resources for new tools for public health and in supporting more precarious, but potentially essential, parts of the finance sector.

This book will be essential reading to students, researchers, policymakers and the general public alike who are interested in, or who work in, and across, health systems and social finance.

Expanding on the first edition the book now covers approaches to evidence synthesis that combine economics and systematic review methods in the applied fields of social welfare, education and criminal justice, as well as health care. Written by economists and health services researchers closely involved in developing evidence-based policy and practice it showcases current state-of-the-art methodology and will be an invaluable read for all policy-makers and practitioners using evidence to inform decisions, analysts conducting research to support decisions and students discovering the need for evidence-based decisions to incorporate economic perspectives and evidence.

Why do most capitalist economies have socialist health care systems? How can we preserve them? What would Aneurin Bevan think? These are the three main questions addressed by this book.

In the 1950s, through In Place of Fear, Bevan made a strong case for a National Health Service which he had been instrumental in establishing in the UK in 1948. But he did not articulate the accompanying economic case. That case is presented here in an accessible way and extended to social care. A comprehensive understanding of ‘tried and tested’ means of financing health care is presented, alongside assessments of repeated and new approaches proposed in policy circles as quick fixes to funding shortfalls. This is tackled across four themes: the role of the private sector; making choices in the face of resource scarcity; workforce planning and remuneration; and preparation for pandemics. The emerging proposals carry a cost to the public purse, but must be weighed against the costs and unfairness of further disintegration. With a special focus on the UK and the NHS at a critical time for policy change, this essential book provides the blueprint for policymakers, clinical leadership and politicians needing to pay more attention to the economic issues underlying health and social care as they shape In Place of Fear 2.0.