Submit to Sustainability Review for Sustainability Propose a Special Issue

Journal Browser

Challenge of Sustainable Healthcare Financing Across Eur-Asia and Emerging Markets in 2020s

Print Special Issue Flyer
Special Issue Editors
Special Issue Information
Keywords
Published Papers

A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Health, Well-Being and Sustainability".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 January 2022) | Viewed by 21237

Share This Special Issue

Special Issue Editors

Prof. Dr. Mihajlo (Michael) Jakovljevic

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor

1. Department Global Health Economics & Policy, University of Kragujevac, 34000 Kragujevac, Serbia
2. Institute of Comparative Economic Studies, Hosei University, Tokyo 102-8160, Japan
Interests: global health; global burden of disease project; big data; health care financing & expenditures; evaluation of policy; programs and health system performance; organisation of health care markets; health economics; emerging markets
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Prof. Dr. Takuma Sugahara

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor

Faculty of Economics, Hosei University, 102-8160 Tokyo, Japan

Dr. Yuriy Timofeyev

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor

School of Business Administration, Faculty of Business and Management, National Research University Higher School of Economics, Moscow, Russia
Interests: managerial economics; corruption; healthcare management; cost-effectiveness

Assist. Prof. Dr. Michael A. Talias

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor

Healthcare Management Postgraduate Program, Faculty of Economics and Management, Open University Cyprus, P.O. Box 12794, 2252 Nicosia, Cyprus
Interests: health economics; healthcare management; health services research; health methodology; sustainability

Prof. Dr. Simon Grima

E-Mail Website1 Website2
Guest Editor

1. Faculty of Economics, Management and Accountancy, Insurance and Risk Management Department, University of Malta, MSD 2080 Msida, Malta
2. Faculty of Business, Management and Economics, University of Latvia, LV-1050 Riga, Latvia
Interests: financial technologies; financial management and asset management; risk management; compliance and regulations; corporate finance; corporate governance; audit management; financial services; behavioral economics
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Eurasia and its inner and outer emerging markets remain closely mutually interconnected via globalization strings. This shall remain the case, even through Covid, which has caused global economic downturn and crisis, fully unravelling in the early 2020s. Prior to the pandemic, there were severe difficulties funding existent social protection, pension, retirement, and labor market policies, which were inherited from the historical era of demographic growth across the world. This period effectively ended several decades ago, being replaced with the spread and acceleration of the global population ageing phenomenon. All of these bottlenecks of financial sustainability will be worsened by the world’s economic lock-down, triggered by the pandemic.

This Specialty Issue aims to gain profound knowledge on healthcare financing sustainability in the early years of the worldwide economic crisis of the 2020s. The main aim of healthcare structures is to protect and improve the health of a population. Ensuring this may put a heavy strain on resources. Therefore, when it comes to healthcare services, sustainability has to be taken into account as a main requirement and an important issue. We need to ensure the timely and cost-effective delivery of high-quality healthcare in the modern world, where fast changing and challenging circumstances and demands, mainly due to the increased web of globalization resulting from travel, and an increase in longevity are all are putting pressure on healthcare systems. With these assumptions in mind, we need to investigate sustainable high-quality healthcare, ensure ongoing research and development in this complex subject, while ensuring quality of service and cost-effectiveness, with the objective being to develop innovative systems, solutions, and strategies to realize sustainability, especially in the main macro-areas.

There is a clear need to build hospitals and healthcare stations that are able to cope with health as a complete well-being concept. Such complex realities can work only if every single part is healthy and care is taken to proactively act on prospective disrupters.

Regardless of current pandemic-related efforts, a broader perspective on healthcare funding sustainability shall supposedly be shaken during the years ahead in rich and poor nations alike. Eurasian and emerging markets acted as engines of global economic growth, before, during, and after the last worldwide recession of 2007–2017. Thus, these same nations will be the hotbed of change in the next wave of crises. Asia has leadership in many medical innovations and has cutting-edge E-Health technologies, with an increasing frequency of high-end patents. Given these facts, we plan to attract submissions overlapping the mentioned research questions in its broadest sense, without limitations on jurisdictions where submissions might come from.

Prof. Dr. Mihajlo (Michael) Jakovljevic
Prof. Dr. Takuma Sugahara
Dr. Yuriy Timofeyev
Assist. Prof. Dr. Michael A. Talias
Prof. Dr. Simon Grima
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

emerging markets
Asia
Europe
healthcare
financing
sustainability
spending
XXI century
crisis
2020s
BRICS
EM7
next eleven

Published Papers (4 papers)

Download All Papers

Research

Jump to: Review

15 pages, 531 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Innovative Development Finance for Health Sector Development: Focusing on the Air Ticket Solidarity Levy System in the Republic of Korea

by Jisun Song and Lynn Pyun

Sustainability 2022, 14(5), 2766; https://doi.org/10.3390/su14052766 - 26 Feb 2022

Viewed by 1468

Abstract

Financial sustainability has been a perennial problem in international development. Furthermore, among different areas of developmental support, securing sufficient financial resources is particularly significant in the health sector where people’s very lives are at stake. Given the above, we examine innovative development finance (IDF) for the health sector with a particular focus on the air ticket solidarity levy system in the Republic of Korea. After an overview of the origins and the present state of the solidarity tax system, we explain how it was implemented in the context of South Korea’s health ODA (Official Development Assistance). A first-ever health ODA stakeholders’ perception survey with its implications on the airplane tax system follows. For policy suggestions, we suggest incorporating a COVID-19 agenda into the Global Disease Eradication Fund (GDEF) immediately, and to raise public awareness in a timely fashion. We believe the Korean case is significant for both its direct impact in the Eurasian region as an emerging donor, and for its unique position due to its middle-power status whose trajectory could serve as an example to many other nations seeking sustainable financial schemes. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Challenge of Sustainable Healthcare Financing Across Eur-Asia and Emerging Markets in 2020s)

► Show Figures

Figure 1

Review

Jump to: Research

18 pages, 341 KiB

Open AccessReview

Sustainability Challenge of Eastern Europe—Historical Legacy, Belt and Road Initiative, Population Aging and Migration

by Mihajlo Jakovljevic, Arcadio A. Cerda, Yansui Liu, Leidy García, Yuriy Timofeyev, Kristijan Krstic and John Fontanesi

Sustainability 2021, 13(19), 11038; https://doi.org/10.3390/su131911038 - 5 Oct 2021

Cited by 32 | Viewed by 4187

Abstract

The historical legacy of Eastern European and the Balkans’ health systems was mutually interdependent and shaped by local socioeconomic circumstances. Three distinctive systems of risk sharing and health financing developed since the late XIX century were the Bismarck, Beveridge, and Semashko systems. Modern day healthcare systems in these countries are challenged by population aging, accelerated innovation in medical technology, growing purchasing power and rising demand for healthcare services. Supply-side changes contribute to demand-side efficiency bottlenecks in financing, driving up the costs of the already expensive medical care. All of the nations have a large share of citizens experiencing difficulty with affordability and access to medical care, particularly in rural and remote areas. Network of health technology assessment agencies have mushroomed over the past three decades. Principles of health economics theory and cost-effective resource allocation are slowly gaining ground in governing authorities’ mindset and decision-making processes. For many years to come, pharmaceuticals and medical services will remain dependent on out-of-pocket spending. Currently, accelerating and spreading 4.0 Industrial Revolution, together with the Belt and Road Initiative, are likely to substantially impact the further economic development of this vast region. Post-pandemic “green” recovery strategies adopted by many of the Eastern European governments shall also make this transition toward sustainable development more difficult and challenging, given the large dependency of all these economies on traditional carbon fuels. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Challenge of Sustainable Healthcare Financing Across Eur-Asia and Emerging Markets in 2020s)

10 pages, 682 KiB

Open AccessReview

Highlighting the Role of Universally Available and Innate Immune Cell Counts in Acute Ischemic Stroke: A Scoping Review

by Tissa Wijeratne, Carmela Sales, Rohit Menon, Leila Karimi and Mihajlo Jakovljevic

Sustainability 2021, 13(7), 4069; https://doi.org/10.3390/su13074069 - 6 Apr 2021

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 2267

Abstract

Stroke is one of the leading causes of adult disability and the second leading cause of death worldwide. The immune system actively participates in the pathobiological process of acute ischemic stroke (AIS), during the index event and the repair process. Research on neurovascular inflammation has created a renewed interest in the use of easily available biomarkers reflective of innate and adaptive immunological changes with potential diagnostic, prognostic, and therapeutic implications particularly in AIS. The current scoping review aimed to assess the significance the neutrophil to lymphocyte (NLR) in AIS and its related complications and explore their association with post-stroke recovery trajectory. The Arksey and O’Malley methodological framework was employed to review the published papers on the neutrophil–lymphocyte ratio (NLR) and AIS in late November 2020. Only studies published in English from 2000–2020 were included in this scoping review. Fifty-three published papers were reviewed. This review’s key finding is that a canonical inflammatory response occurs in the hyperacute, acute, subacute, and chronic stages of stroke. An excessive circulating innate immune cells (neutrophils) and reduced circulating adaptive immune cells (lymphocytes) are associated with poorer outcomes during the acute interventions as well as the recovery trajectory. This scoping review’s findings highlights the utility of a systems biology-based approach in stroke care. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Challenge of Sustainable Healthcare Financing Across Eur-Asia and Emerging Markets in 2020s)

► Show Figures

Figure 1

18 pages, 535 KiB

Open AccessReview

Public Health Policy of India and COVID-19: Diagnosis and Prognosis of the Combating Response

by Priya Gauttam, Nitesh Patel, Bawa Singh, Jaspal Kaur, Vijay Kumar Chattu and Mihajlo Jakovljevic

Sustainability 2021, 13(6), 3415; https://doi.org/10.3390/su13063415 - 19 Mar 2021

Cited by 23 | Viewed by 12037

Abstract

(1) Background: Society and public policy have been remained interwoven since the inception of the modern state. Public health policy has been one of the important elements of the public administration of the Government of India (GOI). In order to universalize healthcare facilities for all, the GOI has formulated and implemented the national health policy (NHP). The latest NHP (2017) has been focused on the “Health in All” approach. On the other hand, the ongoing pandemic COVID-19 had left critical impacts on India’s health, healthcare system, and human security. The paper’s main focus is to critically examine the existing healthcare facilities and the GOI’s response to combat the COVID-19 apropos the NHP 2017. The paper suggests policy options that can be adopted to prevent the further expansion of the pandemic and prepare the country for future health emergency-like situations. (2) Methods: Extensive literature search was done in various databases, such as Scopus, Web of Science, Medline/PubMed, and google scholar search engines to gather relevant information in the Indian context. (3) Results: Notwithstanding the several combatting steps on a war-footing level, COVID-19 has placed an extra burden over the already overstretched healthcare infrastructure. Consequently, infected cases and deaths have been growing exponentially, making India stand in second place among the top ten COVID-19-infected countries. (4) Conclusions: India needs to expand the public healthcare system and enhance the expenditure as per the set goals in NHP-17 and WHO standards. The private healthcare system has not been proved reliable during the emergency. Only the public health system is suitable for the country wherein the population’s substantial size is rural and poor. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Challenge of Sustainable Healthcare Financing Across Eur-Asia and Emerging Markets in 2020s)

► Show Figures