IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/socmed/v23y1986i6p559-566.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Why health improves: Defining the issues concerning 'comprehensive primary health care' and 'selective primary health care'

Author

Listed:
  • Rifkin, Susan B.
  • Walt, Gill

Abstract

What is the impact of technology on improving the life situations of people, especially the poor? How is this impact analyzed in terms of health improvements? These questions are paramount in the minds of health planners as they pursue national policies of primary health care, a policy popularized by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) and accepted by over 150 governments at Alma Ata in 1978. The purpose of this paper is to explore these questions in depth. It begins by giving the background to the debate, then examines the origins of two concepts which have dominated the field, those of 'primary health care' and 'selective primary health care.' On this basis it suggests areas of differences in the two concepts and discusses the policy and practical implications of confusing the two approaches. The paper suggests that the differences are firstly who controls the outcome of technological interventions and the perceived time frame in which plans can be carried out.

Suggested Citation

  • Rifkin, Susan B. & Walt, Gill, 1986. "Why health improves: Defining the issues concerning 'comprehensive primary health care' and 'selective primary health care'," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 23(6), pages 559-566, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:23:y:1986:i:6:p:559-566
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0277-9536(86)90149-8
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Brown, Malcolm C. & Crampton, Peter, 1997. "New Zealand policy strategies concerning the funding of general practitioner care," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 41(2), pages 87-104, August.
    2. Lewis, Maureen & Eskeland, Gunnar & Traa-Valerezo, Ximena, 2004. "Primary health care in practice: is it effective?," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 70(3), pages 303-325, December.
    3. Christopher Barrett & Joanne Csete, 1994. "Conceptualizing hunger in contemporary African policymaking: From technical to community-based approaches," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 11(4), pages 38-46, September.
    4. Lewis, Maureen & Eskeland, Gunnar S. & Traa-Valerezo, Ximena, 1999. "Challenging El Salvador's rural health care strategy," Policy Research Working Paper Series 2164, The World Bank.
    5. Murray, Christopher J. L., 1995. "Towards an analytical approach to health sector reform," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 32(1-3), pages 93-109.
    6. Valeria Oliveira-Cruz & Christoph Kurowski & Anne Mills, 2003. "Delivery of priority health services: searching for synergies within the vertical versus horizontal debate," Journal of International Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 15(1), pages 67-86.
    7. Kitamura, Tomomi & Obara, Hiromi & Takashima, Yoshihiro & Takahashi, Kenzo & Inaoka, Kimiko & Nagai, Mari & Endo, Hiroyoshi & Jimba, Masamine & Sugiura, Yasuo, 2013. "World Health Assembly Agendas and trends of international health issues for the last 43 years: Analysis of World Health Assembly Agendas between 1970 and 2012," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 110(2), pages 198-206.
    8. Flessa, Steffen, 2003. "Priorities and allocation of health care resources in developing countries: A case-study from the Mtwara region, Tanzania," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 150(1), pages 67-80, October.
    9. Stekelenburg, Jelle & Kyanamina, Sindele Simasiku & Wolffers, Ivan, 2003. "Poor performance of community health workers in Kalabo District, Zambia," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 65(2), pages 109-118, August.
    10. Riviere-Cinnamond, Ana, 2005. "Animal Health Policy and Practice: Scaling-up Community-based Animal Health Systems, Lessons from Human Health," PPLPI Working Papers 23775, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Pro-Poor Livestock Policy Initiative.
    11. Pauline Murray‐Parahi & Michelle DiGiacomo & Debra Jackson & Patricia M Davidson, 2016. "New graduate registered nurse transition into primary health care roles: an integrative literature review," Journal of Clinical Nursing, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 25(21-22), pages 3084-3101, November.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:23:y:1986:i:6:p:559-566. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/315/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.