Editorial for 31,1.

Abstract

Welcome to the first issue of 2016. As is usual, our coverage is global (indeed all five continents feature in this issue) and multi-disciplinary, and concerns many topics. The first article, by Holland, is in our occasional series, Perspectives, and is entitled ‘Lessons from the Past’. It draws on experience in the UK and elsewhere and is a timely reminder that wisdom can be lost as well as gained, as change occurs in health services, medicine and education in line with changing fashions, orthodoxies and (sometimes) necessities. The second article, by Zhang, is one of our Reviews, and looks at the global implications of China's healthcare reforms, building on our past ‘special issues’ on China to extend the debate further to consider Chinese policy in an even wider context. Turning to our research articles: the third article also concerns China, and looks at health reform, the rural cooperative scheme and governmental and individual contributions – also extending consideration of policies analysed in our ‘special issues’. The fourth article is on the regulation of private hospitals in Asia, highlighting problems and issues in an unregulated private sector, allowing consideration of how some generic issues are relevant both in China and elsewhere in Asia. The fifth article concerns productivity analysis in aid of determining and improving the productivity of acute hospitals. The sixth concerns community programmes for coronary heart disease in primary care in Spain. The seventh and eighth concern respectively access to medicines and to the use of health services by Syrian refugee children in Jordan, and the social determinants of health in slum areas of Jordan, including policy implications. Both articles, in their different ways, illustrate the pressure upon health services in Jordan and the health needs of both native and migrant populations. The ninth article concerns the rural poor in La Guajira, Colombia, and the search for better health coverage in terms of their preferences regarding health insurance benefits. Turning to our online only section: the 10th article looks at service providers' views of community participation in Australian primary care, in terms of ‘empowerment’ and challenges in implementation. The 11th looks at the performance of medicines' regulatory authorities in Serbia in terms of quality improvement. The 12th looks at informal payments by and for HIV patients in Cameroon and how these are affected by ‘supply side’ factors in healthcare. The 13th returns to China and asks if the information system can handle ‘DRGs’.