Health system responses to financial pressures in Ireland: policy options in an international context

Given the scale of the challenge facing the health system for 2013 and subsequent years, the Department of Health invited the European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies to prepare a report on the implications for the Irish health system of our current financial pressures. The Observatory is an international partnership hosted by the World Health Organisation (WHO). The partnership includes three other international agencies (European Commission, the European Investment Bank, World Bank), several national and decentralized governments, including Ireland, and academic institutions. As an independent and neutral knowledge broker the Observatory's core mission is to inform policy-making and decision-making processes by providing tailored, timely and reliable evidence on health policy and health systems. Click here to download PDF 2.1mb

Inequalities in Health in an Aging Population: Patterns, Causes and Consequences

The increase in life expectancy that we continue to observe raises a complex set of challenges for policy. Among these challenges is the need to respond to the heterogeneity that remains in life expectancy within the older population. Most important is that life expectancy, even at older ages, differs markedly by socioeconomic position. In addition, despite increases in longevitymany individuals now effectively retire before state pension age and a large proportion of these are dependent on benefit income. In contrast, the contribution by older people to informal careprovision and other services has the potential to provide an important input into society, the economy and their own well-being. A crucial question, therefore, is which sections of the older population will live healthy active lives and which will be dependent on formal and informal sources of support. To answer this, we need to understand how inequalities in health are distributed in the older population and what the underlying causal processes are.

The international evidence on the prevention of drug and alcohol use Summary and examples of implementation in England

The United Nations Office of Drug Control (UNODC) published ‘International Standards on Drug Use Prevention’ in 2013. The Standards were developed through a systematic assessment of the international evidence on prevention and they provide a summary of the available scientific evidence. The briefing provides a summary of the UNODC prevention standards and gives corresponding examples of relevant UK guidelines,programmes and interventions currently available in England. Its aim is to help people who commission, develop and implement prevention strategies and interventions to translate the standards into the English operating landscape. It also aims to support local authority commissioners to develop their prevention strategies and implement them in line with evidence.