The United States is among the wealthiest nations in the world, but it is far from the healthiest. Although life expectancy and survival rates in the United States have improved dramatically over the past century, Americans live shorter lives and experience more injuries and illnesses than people in other high-income countries. The U.S. health disadvantage cannot be attributed solely to the adverse health status of racial or ethnic minorities or poor people: even highly advantaged Americans are in worse health than their counterparts in other, "peer" countries. In light of the new and growing evidence about the U.S. health disadvantage, the National Institutes of Health asked the National Research Council (NRC) and the Institute of Medicine (IOM) to convene a panel of experts to study the issue. The Panel on Understanding Cross-National Health Differences Among High-Income Countries examined whether the U.S. health disadvantage exists across the life span, considered potential explanations, and assessed the larger implications of the findings. U.S. Health in International Perspective presents detailed evidence on the issue, explores the possible explanations for the shorter and less healthy lives of Americans than those of people in comparable countries, and recommends actions by both government and nongovernment agencies and organizations to address the U.S. health disadvantage.

In the realm of health care, privacy protections are needed to preserve patients' dignity and prevent possible harms. Ten years ago, to address these concerns as well as set guidelines for ethical health research, Congress called for a set of federal standards now known as the HIPAA Privacy Rule. In its 2009 report, Beyond the HIPAA Privacy Rule: Enhancing Privacy, Improving Health Through Research, the Institute of Medicine's Committee on Health Research and the Privacy of Health Information concludes that the HIPAA Privacy Rule does not protect privacy as well as it should, and that it impedes important health research.

Offering a practical, six-step approach to effective survey design, delivery, and analysis, Survey Methods for Medical and Health Professions Education provides a real-world framework for successful research and evaluation using surveys. Focused on medical and other health professional education research, this unique text features quick-reference checklists, high-yield explanations, and case examples throughout, making it both a foundational reference and a go-to resource for all health professions educators and researchers who use surveys. - Provides a detailed and practical discussion of the steps in survey methodology, along with just enough theory to inform common decisions. - Includes numerous real-world examples, both simple and complex, covering the wide range of problems researchers are likely to face. - Addresses issues of survey fatigue and addresses the challenge of how to get "good data." - Features "Voice of Experience" boxes—pearls based on authors' actual experiences. - Concludes each chapter with a checklist so readers can quickly ensure they have covered every necessary step of survey design and implementation. - Contains a convenient glossary of terms. - Offers guidance from expert international contributors in medical and health professions research. - Summarizes the most current standards and understanding of survey research so that experienced and novice researchers alike can directly apply content to improve research rigor.

This third global survey of the WHO Global Observatory for eHealth (GOe) investigated how eHealth can support universal health coverage(UHC) in Member States. A total of 125 countries participated in the survey ? a clear reflection of the growing interest in this area. The report considers eHealth foundations built through policy development funding approaches and capacity building in eHealth through the training of students and professionals. It then observes specific eHealth applications such as mHealth telehealth electronic health records systems and eLearning and how these contribute to the goals of UHC. Of interest is the extent to which legal frameworks protect patient privacy in EHRs as health care systems move towards to delivering safer more efficient and more accessible health care. Finally the rapidly emerging areas of social media for health care as well as big data for research and planning are reported.

In 2015, building on the advances of the Millennium Development Goals, the United Nations adopted Sustainable Development Goals that include an explicit commitment to achieve universal health coverage by 2030. However, enormous gaps remain between what is achievable in human health and where global health stands today, and progress has been both incomplete and unevenly distributed. In order to meet this goal, a deliberate and comprehensive effort is needed to improve the quality of health care services globally. Crossing the Global Quality Chasm: Improving Health Care Worldwide focuses on one particular shortfall in health care affecting global populations: defects in the quality of care. This study reviews the available evidence on the quality of care worldwide and makes recommendations to improve health care quality globally while expanding access to preventive and therapeutic services, with a focus in low-resource areas. Crossing the Global Quality Chasm emphasizes the organization and delivery of safe and effective care at the patient/provider interface. This study explores issues of access to services and commodities, effectiveness, safety, efficiency, and equity. Focusing on front line service delivery that can directly impact health outcomes for individuals and populations, this book will be an essential guide for key stakeholders, governments, donors, health systems, and others involved in health care.

Healthcare decision makers in search of reliable information that compares health interventions increasingly turn to systematic reviews for the best summary of the evidence. Systematic reviews identify, select, assess, and synthesize the findings of similar but separate studies, and can help clarify what is known and not known about the potential benefits and harms of drugs, devices, and other healthcare services. Systematic reviews can be helpful for clinicians who want to integrate research findings into their daily practices, for patients to make well-informed choices about their own care, for professional medical societies and other organizations that develop clinical practice guidelines. Too often systematic reviews are of uncertain or poor quality. There are no universally accepted standards for developing systematic reviews leading to variability in how conflicts of interest and biases are handled, how evidence is appraised, and the overall scientific rigor of the process. In Finding What Works in Health Care the Institute of Medicine (IOM) recommends 21 standards for developing high-quality systematic reviews of comparative effectiveness research. The standards address the entire systematic review process from the initial steps of formulating the topic and building the review team to producing a detailed final report that synthesizes what the evidence shows and where knowledge gaps remain. Finding What Works in Health Care also proposes a framework for improving the quality of the science underpinning systematic reviews. This book will serve as a vital resource for both sponsors and producers of systematic reviews of comparative effectiveness research.

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