Despite a culture of innovation, the U.S. health care system has been markedly deficient in its implementation of information technology (IT). Although recent initiatives have endeavored to remedy this shortcoming, fragmentation, high costs, information asymmetries, and evolving regulatory...

In recent years, much attention has been directed at the ongoing increase in body weight, and what might be done about it. We use data from the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) for the period 1982-1996 to estimate models relating measures of body weight (BMI, a dummy indicating that a...

The health benefits of spas have been hypothesized for centuries. If this hypothesis is correct, spa therapy offers a low cost alternative to more expensive and potentially more invasive medical treatments for ailments such as back pain and arthritis. We use individual-level panel data to...

Unwanted pregnancy represents a major cost of sexual activity. When abortion was legalized in a number of states in 1969 and 1970 (and nationally in 1973), this cost was reduced. We predict that abortion legalization generated incentives leading to an increase in sexual activity, accompanied by...

We use the best available longitudinal dataset, the Health and Retirement Survey, and a battery of causal inference methods to provide both central estimates and bounds on the effect of health insurance on health and mortality among the near elderly (initial age 50-61) over an 18-year period....

The study focuses on the HIV/AIDS in Khartoum state during the period (2003-2007). The main objectives are to study the situation of HIV/AIDS in Khartoum state through a sample of 1439 of volunteers for the three selected blood testing and counseling centers in Khartoum, Omdurman, and Khartoum...

The present paper introduces results of an analysis conducted on data collected from Khartoum state for the yea 2009. It aims to apply statistical models for the HIV/AIDS data in Khartoum state centers of testing blood and counseling. AIDS is recognized as an emerging disease only in the early...

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused Governments to contemplate measures to override patents and other intellectual property rights (IPRs) in order to facilitate production and distribution of vaccines, treatments, diagnostics and medical devices. This paper discusses whether the COVID-19 pandemic...

These are neither the best of times nor the worst of times for the pharmaceutical industry, or for global public health. Media reports regarding recent legal developments would suggest that the originator pharmaceutical industry is facing a new and dangerous threat to its long-term welfare,...

Access to biological material with human pathogenic potential (pathogen materials) is important because research directed toward the development of new drugs and vaccines is dependent on scientific analysis of the underlying causes of disease. Member States of the World Health Organization (WHO)...