Precision medicine or personalized medicine refers to the customization of medical treatment based on the ability to classify individuals into subpopulations that differ in susceptibility to a particular disease or in response to a specific treatment. This new perception about diagnosis and...

Using data for the 27 Brazilian states during the period 1980-2009, we found that the media index in an important determinant of the suicide rates. The econometric results suggest that an increase of 1% in the media index increases the suicide rate for young males (age between 15 and 29 years...

Health is an important area of activity of the Institute of Applied Economic Research (Ipea), whose purpose is to promote and carry out research and social and economic studies, as well as disseminate the resulting knowledge, offering society solutions to the challenges of economic and social...

We evaluate the efficiency of expenditure in health care provision by comparing various output measures (life expectancy; infant survival rate; years of life recovered from diseases; population; area) from the health system of Brazilian and OECD countries with an expenditure measure (health...

In 1988 Brazil was one of the first Latin American countries to frame access to health care as a constitutional right, but, in fact, it has not produced coverage of its citizens. Brazil's Unified Health System (Sistema Único de Saúde, or SUS in Portuguese) cannot quite be described as a public...

Using data from the Brazilian Census 2000 we estimate whether the distribution of the eligible population of the Continuous Cash Benefit (BPC) would change after a modification in definition of family used to calculate family per capita income. Our results show that in 2000 the majority of...

We estimate the distributions of the eligible public, benefits and coverage levels of the Brazilian Continuous Cash Benefit Program (BPC) using survey data from the 2000 Census and the 2006 National Household Survey. The estimates show that the eligible population is uniformly distributed along...

This work develops a framework able to guide investment in hospital capacities within the realm of a complex health system. The study is performed from the standpoint of the economic surplus of public hospitals. Although the paper is inspired by the Brazilian National Health System, it can be...

Different conceptions about distribution criteria in health services are discussed based on the notion of fairness, and in the assumption that health requirements are simultaneously social security needs. Issues of equity and limits in distribution of health services are highlighted as they are...