Household Production Of Health Research Articles

Global developments in social prescribing

Social prescribing is an approach that aims to improve health and well-being. It connects individuals to non-clinical services and supports that address social needs, such as those related to loneliness, housing instability and mental health. At the person level, social prescribing can give individuals the knowledge, skills, motivation and confidence to manage their own health and well-being. At the society level, it can facilitate greater collaboration across health, social, and community sectors to promote integrated care and move beyond the traditional biomedical model of health. While the term social prescribing was first popularised in the UK, this practice has become more prevalent and widely publicised internationally over the last decade. This paper aims to illuminate the ways social prescribing has been conceptualised and implemented across 17 countries in Europe, Asia, Australia and North America. We draw from the ‘Beyond the Building Blocks’ framework to describe the essential inputs for adopting social prescribing into policy and practice, related to service delivery; social determinants and household production of health; workforce; leadership and governance; financing, community organisations and societal partnerships; health technology; and information, learning and accountability. Cross-cutting lessons can inform country and regional efforts to tailor social prescribing models to best support local needs.

A Framework for Assessing Socio-Economic Impact of Covid-19 at Household Level

The governments across the world have adopted measures to contain the spread of virus which has resulted into restricted economic activities. While economic impacts are diverse and wide spread, the interest in examining impacts at household level is of utmost importance from policy perspectives. This helps monitoring the progress of major socio-economic indicators and make timely and appropriate policy responses. In this context, this perspective paper outlines methodology to be adopted in examining the impacts of COVID-19 in number of household level indicators based on the literatures of impact evaluation. This paper also outlines a framework for identifying key priorities areas with particular reference to Nepal. We propose standard household health production function model with a use of quasi-experimental design as a candidate to examine the impacts at the household level. Likewise, indicators pertaining to poverty, food and nutrition, education, health and labor market are of primary interest with reference to Nepal's development aspirations and trajectory. We expect that this paper will contribute in choosing suitable methodology for assessing impacts at household level and understanding the policy and data context in Nepal.

Ambient indoor air pollution and its consecutive effect on environment materials and health

The economic cost of urban air pollution is measured by considering household health production function model which consists of health production function, demand function for mitigating activities and demand function for averting activities. To supplement the analysis of cost of illness approach, on the contingent valuation survey is also employed. The ordered logistic regression model is used to analyze the factors affecting willingness to pay for reducing urban air pollution.The total suspended particulate matter (TSPM or PM10) and the respirable suspended particulate matter (RSPM or PM2.5) are considered as criteria pollutants. It is found that PM10and PM2.5 concentration has exceeded the National Ambient Air Quality Standards Suggested by in all the monitoring stations of study area. It is two to three times higher than the average annual standard. The results have shown that cough, dust allergy and asthma are more prevalent in the study area.

Adaptation to health outcomes of climate change and variability at the city level: An empirical decision support tool

Adaptation to health risk due to climate variability and change at the city level is inadequate, particularly in developing economies. Here, coping strategies with short-term benefits, adopted by the residents contribute significantly to their resilience. Decision on effective adaptation, therefore, requires economic evaluation of the coping and adaptation strategies in practise. In the present paper a novel framework using household health production function (HPF) approach has been developed for evaluation of coping and adaptation strategies to serve as a decision tool for planners. The outcome informs decision makers about the benefits and effectiveness of coping, and shortcomings in the existing adaptation strategies, thus, contributing to stocktaking. The approach has been validated using a case of vector-borne disease of dengue, an important climate-sensitive health impact of climate change. A five step cyclical framework has been proposed which addresses uncertainty by avoiding the need for future projection of health outcomes and scenario building as it can be applied at any point of time in future and considers the current risk only. The strengths and weaknesses of the proposed tool are compared with other similar tools. The decision support tool has applicability for all climate-sensitive health outcomes at the city level.

Urban adaptation to climate sensitive health effect: Evaluation of coping strategies for dengue in Delhi, India

In absence of adaptation initiative, residents resort to coping strategies to manage climate-related health risks. Delhi, the capital city of India, is highly endemic to the climate sensitive vector-borne disease of dengue. The weeks of a year with risk of dengue occurrence due to weather patterns are identified by using Poisson regression which uses data for climate variables and reported dengue cases. The coping strategies adopted by household are then evaluated using survey data of 559 households. An economic evaluation of coping strategies to serve as an important decision tool in developing adaptive capacity was carried out using household health production function approach. The econometric tools of Negative Binomial Regression and probit regression have been used for evaluation. The methodological framework provides a novel approach by linking climatic variability, health impact and economic evaluation of adaptation strategies. The results reveal that the dengue risk is mainly addressed by coping strategies at the household level and intervention measures are ineffective due to inappropriate timing and selective approach. The annual economic benefit of adopting coping strategies is estimated as US$ 65 per household. The benefits of coping strategies in reducing dengue risk contribute to the planning of adaptation strategies at city level.

Interracial Marriage and Self-Reported Health of Whites and Blacks in the United States

This study examines the self-reported health of 180,291 married non-Hispanic blacks and whites in interracial versus endogamous marriages. Data are from the National Health Interview Survey pooled over the period 1997–2013. The results from ordinal logistic regressions show that non-Hispanic whites intermarried with non-Hispanic blacks, non-Hispanic whites intermarried with non-Hispanic other races, and non-Hispanic white women with Hispanic husbands report significantly poorer health than their endogamous counterparts. Furthermore, non-Hispanic whites with non-Hispanic black spouses also fare worse than their interracially married peers with Hispanic spouses. In contrast, the self-reported health of married non-Hispanic blacks shows no significant difference between the interracially and the endogamously married. Our findings highlight the theoretical significance of spousal characteristics and couple-level contexts in the household production of health.

Socioeconomic status and health outcomes in a developing country

Although the relationship between socioeconomic status (SES) and health is well documented for developed countries, less evidence has been presented for developing countries. The aim of this paper is to analyse this relationship at the household level for Fiji, a developing country in the South Pacific, using original household survey data. To allow for the endogeneity of SES status in the household health production function, we utilize a simultaneous equation approach where estimates are achieved by full information maximum likelihood. By restricting our sample to one, relatively small island, and including area and district hospital effects, physical geography effects are unpacked from income effects. We measure SES, as permanent income which is constructed using principal components analysis. An alternative specification considers transitory household income. We find that a 1% increase in wealth (our measure of permanent income) would lead to a 15% decrease in the probability of an incapacitating illness occurring intra-household. Although the presence of a strong relationship indicates that relatively small improvements in SES status can significantly improve health at the household level, it is argued that the design of appropriate policy would also require an understanding of the various mechanisms through which the relationship operates.

Health benefits valuation of regulatory intervention for air pollution control in thermal power plants in Delhi, India

This study estimates minimum marginal health benefits (morbidity reduction only) of air pollution control and total health benefits arising from regulatory intervention regarding the adoption of the World Bank emission guidelines (WBEG) for thermal power plants (TPPs) in Delhi. The Industrial Source Complex-Short-Term Version–3 (ISCST3) model has been used to estimate the contribution to air pollution from TPPs. The household health production function (avertive behaviour) has been used to value health benefits of air pollution control. The study revealed that the ambient air pollution due to TPPs is reduced by between 62.17% to 83.45% by adopting the WBEG. Annual marginal benefit due to reduction in exposure to air pollution by 1 μg m−3 is estimated to be US$0.353 per person. Total annual health benefits for adopting the WBEG for TPPs are estimated at US$235.19 million. This study provides a novel methodology to evaluate health benefits of regulatory intervention.

Investigating the mechanism of marital mortality reduction: The transition to widowhood and quality of health care

While it is well known that the widowed suffer increased mortality risks, the mechanism of this survival disadvantage is still under investigation. In this article, we examine the quality of health care as a possible link between widowhood and mortality using a unique data set of 475,313 elderly couples who were followed up for up to nine years. We address whether the transition to widowhood affects the quality of care that individuals receive and explore the extent to which these changes mediate the elevated mortality hazard for the widowed. We analyze six established measures of quality of health care in a fixed-effect framework to account for unobserved heterogeneity. Caregiving and acute bereavement during the transition to widowhood appear to distract individuals from taking care of their own health care needs in the short run. However, being widowed does not have long-term detrimental effects on individuals' ability to sustain contact with the formal medical system. Moreover, the short-run disruption does not mediate the widowhood effect on mortality. Nevertheless, long after spousal death, men suffer from a decline in the quality of informal care, coordination between formal and informal care, and the ability to advocate and communicate informal medical settings. These findings illustrate women's centrality in the household production of health and identify important points of intervention in optimizing men's adjustment to widowhood.

Attitudes and Behaviors of Low-Income Food Heads of Households Toward Sustainable Food Systems Concepts

ABSTRACT To what extent do attitudes of low-income food heads of households correspond to beliefs held by mainstream local food movement members regarding food systems? For this qualitative study, 28 households (≤185% US poverty) in rural, village, and inner-city areas were purposively selected and interviewed about acquiring fruits and vegetables. Data analysis revealed 5 themes showing relationships between: household health and food production methods; economic development; food quality and point of origin; local food systems and civic-mindedness; self-respect, self-reliance, and informal food systems; and geographic and economic justice. Physical, economic, and knowledge barriers remain obstacles to greater support of local food systems.

Birth Spacing Perceptions of Rural Filipinos

The purpose of this study was to explore the perceptions of rural Filipinos concerning the various factors influencing birth spacing. The Household Production of Health nested in the Ecological Model was used to provide the conceptual framework for this study. Analysis of ethnographic data produced one domain of meaning, Factors Influencing Birth Spacing, and six categories: (a) gender relations, (b) religion and the Catholic Church, (c) contraceptive technology, (d) media, (e) family and friends, and (f) family planning education. Understanding the factors influencing birth spacing in different cultures may provide health care providers with a broader scope for providing culturally competent care.

Gendered reciprocity: Work discontent and the household production of health

Theoretically, we consider the effects of workers’ discontent with their paid work and their unpaid household work on the health of their spouse. We examine ways in which gendering shapes these effects. Empirically, we perform ordered probit, probit, selection-corrected probit and bivariate probit analyses of data from the 1987–1988 and 1992–1994 waves of the National Survey of Families and Households. We find that if wives are discontent with the appreciation they receive for their paid employment, then their husbands’ health declines subsequently ( n = 644 couples); if husbands are discontent with the fairness of their unpaid household labor, then their wives’ health declines subsequently ( n = 609 couples). Findings and implications are discussed.

Self-Protection and Averting Behavior, Values of Statistical Lives, and Benefit Cost Analysis of Environmental Policy

Situations in which risk is at least partly a matter of choice provide opportunities to analyze behavior and estimate the willingness to pay for small changes in mortality risks. Individuals engage in household production of health and safety as long as the value of the gain in risk reduction is worth the money, time, and any disutility necessary to produce the reduction in risk. This paper reviews values of statistical life inferred from choices about highway speeds, traveler use of protective equipment, crash- worthiness of motor vehicles, and housing location near Superfund sites. The best estimates, close to $4 million in year 2000 dollars, are valuable complements to estimates from labor and constructed markets. Interestingly some evidence suggests that values for children and seniors are not less than middle-aged adults. Issues of risk perception and other challenges related to estimation are discussed.

Creating Healthy Environments: Household-Based Health Behaviors of Contemporary Mexican American Women

This article describes the household-based health behaviors of a sample of contemporary Mexican American women.¹ Using the Household Production of Health (HHPH) as a conceptual framework and ethnographic methods of inquiry, 13 moderately to highly acculturated women of Mexican ancestry participated in multiple interviews about their health beliefs and household health behaviors. This article examines the findings related to the following research question: What are the health-producing and help-seeking behaviors (proximate determinants of health) used by Mexican American women to produce health? Themes focusing on creating healthy environments and treating illness are discussed. Awareness of the activities that women use to create and support household health can enhance the practice of nurses interested in supporting women's health work and improving health outcomes in the Mexican American community.

Medicine for the heart: The embodiment of faith in Morocco

"Medicine for the Heart" is a Moroccan way of describing the power of the Quran to heal the heart, an organ and symbol that links spiritual, emotional, and physical experience. The recitation of Quranic verses offers housewives living in southeastern Saharan Morocco a way to manage emotions associated with recent social changes--emotions that distress the heart and the body. This article is a preliminary examination of how, in everyday life, the phenomenology of faith illuminates an embodied structure of well-being, where spiritual experience merges with physical and emotional experience. Combining the perspectives of the anthropology of experience and social psychology, I highlight some of the spiritual aspects of well-being that emerge in the household production of health, particularly in relation to the core cultural values of unity and interiority. The concept of the spiritual body locates this experience inside the body (in this case radiating from the heart) rather than outside (i.e., in cognitive or symbolic space).

Schooling, health knowledge and obesity

The connection between schooling and health is well documented. An important empirical issue that needs to be examined, however, is whether schooling's effects are due to individual health knowledge differences. This empirical study examines this issue with an increasingly important health indicator, obesity. Since provision of health knowledge is a major tool of public agencies promoting health, this empirical study uses a new direct measure of health knowledge to test this hypothesis. The results show that knowledge is inversely related to the probability that an individual is obese. Schooling's effects on relative weight and the probability of being obese are explained by differences in knowledge. This result may imply that schooling's effect on the allocative efficiency of the household production of health is the main reason schooling is linked to health behaviour. The result also may imply that the most effective method of health education is to highlight the disease element of poor dietary habits and health. More importantly, the simulations conducted suggest positive returns to knowledge based on improvements in the probability estimates.

On the Dynamics of Demand for Leisure and the Production of Health

Our article develops and estimates a structural model of household health production that jointly determines the demand for leisure and the demand for consumption for elderly males. We use a stochastic dynamic programming framework based on the assumption that an individual maximizes lifetime utility subject to budget and time constraints and a health-production function by choosing hours of leisure and levels of consumption of health-related and health-neutral goods and services. Moreover, we use a very comprehensive health index that combines four scales measuring a variety of dimensions in the quality of life. The Euler equations derived from our model are estimated using data from six biennial panels of the Retirement History Survey.

Valuing Health for Policy: An Economic Approach

Preface 1: Overview George Tolley, Donald Kenkel, Robert Fabian. 2: Framework for Valuing Health Risks Mark Berger, Glenn Blomquist, Donald Kenkel, George Tolley. 3: Cost of Illness Approach Donald Kenkel 4: Contingent Valuation of Health Donald Kenkel, Mark Berger, Glenn Blomquist. 5: Household Health Production, Property Values, and the Value of Health Richard Clemmer, Donald Kenkel, Robert Ohsfeldt, William Webb. 6: The Qualy Approach Robert Fabian 7: Issues in Questionnaire Design Robert Fabian, George Tolley. 8: Empirical Results from Household Personal Interviews Michael Brien, Donald Kenkel, Austin Kelly, Robert Fabian. 9: Empirical Results from Mail Questionnaires Wallace Wilson 10: Defining and Measuring Health over Life Lyndon Babcock, Anthony Bilotti. 11: The Quantity and Quality of Life: A Conceptual Framework Sherwin Rosen 12: Modeling of Choices with Uncertain Preferences Charles Kahn 13: Design of Contingent Valuation Approaches to Serious Illness Robert Fabian, Lyndon Babcock, Anthony Bilotti, George Tolley. 14: Future Directions for Health Value Research George Tolley, Robert Fabian. 15: State-of-the-Art Health Values George Tolley, Donald Kenkel, Robert Fabian. 16: The Use of Health Values in Policy George Tolley, Donald Kenkel, Robert Fabian, David Webster. References Contributors Index

African Pastoralist Systems: An Integrated Approach

Research in African Pastoralist Systems, the Editors. Part 1 Historical and Social Processes: Archaeological Evidence of Early Pastoralism, F. Marshall Historical Approaches to African Pastoralism, R. Waller and N. Sobania Pastoral Mobility, E.T. McCabe Household Organisation and Division of Labour in Pastoral Production, E. Fratkin and K. Smith Marriage, Gender, and Kinship, C. Kratz Land as Property and Resource among Pastoralists in Africa, J. Galaty. Part 2 Biological Perspectives: Demography of Pastoral Populations, E. Roth Food and Nutrition among Pastoralists, K. Galvin The Household Production of Health in Pastoral Populations, A. Hill and S. Castle Child Fosterage and Morbidity, B. Shell. Part 3 Development and Economic Change: Herders and the State, P. Little Livestock Marketing and International Development, R. Hitchcock Market Integration and Sedentarisation, J. Ensminger. Part 4 Conclusion: Pastoralism Past, Present, and Future, the Editors.

Reply [to Commentaries on "Race, Gender, Class, and Health" Issue

welcome the opportunity to respond to the commentaries directly related to my article on gender and generation poor women's household health production experiences. First, I found Porter's theoretical critique of gender and generation the household production of health both incisive and important to further research and theory building. I echo her concern that ethnic effects must be disentangled from class and status effects. As Rubel and Murray (1993:22) also observe, in failing to consider how social class factors mitigate the influence of ethnicity, the analytic power of the latter is defused. For good reason, the struggle to differentiate between situational contexts (such as degrees of poverty or proximity of kin) contrast to culturally influenced patterns of relationships will continue to consume researchers. I agree with Barbee, however, that for most of us, the relative influence of poverty, proximity of kin, culture, or gender on our behavior cannot be parcelled out experience. My interest was primarily women's experience household health production all its confounded complexity. Future research, my own included, must take careful account of the ways concepts are conceived, linked, and then communicated, order to avoid theoretically unexciting results. Another issue addressed the commentaries is a question of scope or, as Barbee summed it up, problems of ignoring the larger social order the production of poverty for Mexican American women. To clarify, my research was about the production of health, not the production of poverty. Because poverty influences household behaviors affecting health, the research design attempted to control for those effects by selecting households already poverty as participants. Why they lived poverty or how social injustices facilitated a heavier poverty burden among the Mexican American households was beyond the immediate scope of this research.