This Handbook is a reference for all aspects of the field of health services and outcomes research. It addresses the increasing need for comprehensive, yet balanced, information in a field that welcomes various disciplines: medicine, public health, statistics, economics, management, policy, and information technology. This well-organized reference is an indispensable source of information for everyone who seeks to develop understanding of health systems and to learn about historical, political, and socioeconomic factors that influence health policies at the global, national, regional and local level. Specifically, the Handbook helps readers: Recognize core concepts of health services and outcomes research, such as, need, access, equity, quality and safety; Become familiar with social, political, organizational, behavioral and economic theories that have influenced health systems designs; Learn about frameworks developed for evaluating the organization, financing, delivery, utilization and outcomes of health services; Get an introduction to methods of comparative effectiveness research, program evaluation, health technology assessment and health economics; Identify types and sources of data appropriate for generating valid and reliable information about the delivery of health services; Learn about strengths and weaknesses of various research designs used to study health services and policy issues. The online version of Health Care Systems and Policies is in the format of a dynamically updated knowledge base, offering search tools, cross-referencing across chapters and linking to supplement data, other major reference works and external articles. The Handbook is accessible at the level of graduate students even if it is not their focus area. This includes students with various backgrounds: medicine, public health, statistics, economics, management or information technology.

Author Biography

Professor Boris Sobolev is a Senior Scientist at the Center for Clinical Epidemiology and Evaluation and a faculty member at the UBC School of Public and Population Health. Since 2003, Prof. Sobolev is a Canada Research Chair in Statistics and Modeling for Health Care. In 2004/05 Boris was a Peter Wall Early Career Scholar and currently he is a Faculty Associate at the UBC Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies serving on its Adjudication Committee.