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This commentary argues in favor of international research in the 21st century. Advances in technology, science, communication, transport, and infrastructure have transformed the world into a global village. Industries have increasingly adopted globalization strategies. Likewise, the health sector is more internationalized whereby comparisons between diverse health systems, international best practices, international benchmarking, cross-border health care, and cross-cultural issues have become important subjects in the health care literature. The focus has now turned to international, collaborative, cross-national, and cross-cultural research, which is by far more demanding than domestic studies. In this commentary, we explore the methodological challenges, ethical issues, pitfalls, and practicalities within international research and offer possible solutions to address them.

The commentary synthesizes contributions from four scholars in the field of health care management, who came together during the annual meeting of the Academy of Management to discuss with members of the Health Care Management Division the challenges of international research.

International research is worth pursuing; however, it calls for scholarly attention to key methodological and ethical issues for its success.

This commentary addresses salient issues pertaining to international research in one comprehensive account.

This paper explores the health rights of prisoners as defined in international law, and the mechanisms that have been used to ensure the rights of persons in detention to realise the highest attainable standard of health. It examines this right as articulated within United Nations and regional human rights treaties, non‐binding or so‐called soft law instruments from international organisations and the jurisprudence of international human rights bodies. It explores the use of economic, social and cultural rights mechanisms, and those within civil and political rights, as they engage the right to health of prisoners, and identifies the minimum legal obligations of governments in order to remain compliant with human rights norms as defined within the international case law. In addressing these issues, this article adopts a holistic approach to the definition of the highest attainable standard of health. This includes a consideration of adequate standards of general medical care, including preventative health and mental health services. It also examines the question of environmental health, and those poor conditions of detention that may exacerbate health decline, disease transmission, mental illness or death. The paper examines the approach to prison health of the United Nations human rights system and its various monitoring bodies, as well as the regional human rights systems in Europe, Africa and the Americas. Based upon this analysis, the paper draws conclusions on the current fulfilment of the right to health of prisoners on an international scale, and proposes expanded mechanisms under the UN Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment to monitor and promote the health rights of prisoners at the international and domestic levels.

International students commonly need to adjust to an unfamiliar environment while at the same time juggling with their education without traditional family support. Intercultural adjustment is often stressful for these students, thus contributing to a higher risk of a vulnerable mental and emotional state. The relocation to a foreign country presents a case of temporary migration during the time that they are away. This chapter looks at the challenges international students faced during relocation and adaptation. The study will also discuss how international students cope with mental health issues and the important role educational institutions have in mental health care. Interview data will be drawn on to present the perspectives of a group of international Singaporean university students in Melbourne, Australia, aged between 20 and 25 years old. However, the discussion about mental health issues cannot be assumed to be directly related to the challenges of relocation. Interview data will only represent the perspective of a group of international students and cannot be made generalisable to all international students. Similar to other studies, findings from this chapter reinforced the challenges international students face from their migration. While they acknowledged the importance of mental health care services, there are still barriers to seeking professional help. Future studies could look into how universities can continue to bridge this gap.

This chapter seeks to reveal what are the implications of the corporate social responsibility (CSR) debate on international investment law by focusing on the specific example of public health. The right to health is one of the human rights secured in international law and in the national legislation of a majority of States. This chapter will provide examples of investment cases concerning tobacco control measures, imposed by the Host States for the purpose of improving public health, though challenged by the tobacco companies under International Investment Agreements (IIAs) in investment tribunals. These specific examples cast rather general questions regarding the legal framework of international investment framework and its role in providing sufficient policy space for Host States to implement the public policies and to ensure that foreign companies adhere to the CSR standards.

In order to investigate what are the implications of the CSR debate on international investment law on the example of tobacco industry, the author performs a literature review and analyze two tobacco disputes and its possible implication on the public health debate and protection of foreign investors.

This case study illustrates the complex paradigm that interlink economic and human rights obligations of States on one side of the spectrum and property rights and social responsibilities of tobacco companies on the other side.

This chapter addresses a very topical and pertinent issue in public international law, namely: the role of public interest norms in the regime of foreign direct investment.

Health-care tourism has become a major industry in the past decade. Following the increasing activity in health-care tourism, the decision-making process of consumers in choosing an international health-care facility has become increasingly important to the related parties. The present study aims to offer a holistic model of international health-care facility choice that incorporates the important dimensions by assessing the growth drivers and the alternative factors proposed in the literature and by validating them via a survey study.

The factors deemed important in the existing literature were used as the basis of a study in Turkey. In total, 65 structured interviews were conducted with health-care professionals and international health tourists to understand the perspective of the two important parties that affect policymaking.

The findings of the study support the significance of the majority of the variables proposed as important factors affecting international health-care facility choice.

The study was carried out in four large hospital chains in Turkey; however, this creates a limitation in scope and may have limited representativeness of the overall market. The model has yet to be tested on a larger scale.

There are significant differences in the opinions of professionals and international health-care tourists in terms of choice criteria. This indicates problems with health professionals’ understanding of the consumer decision process.

The study provides a model that can be used to gain insights on the consumer decision process and also provides the policymakers and stakeholders of the international health-care industry with a sound theoretical foundation to build further studies upon. Only a limited number of studies was carried out in Turkey that focus on international health-care tourism, and the present study will fill a substantial research gap.

Previous research has found that international students can experience poor mental health, low levels of life satisfaction, self-esteem and high levels of loneliness when studying in a foreign country. No study has directly compared these between international and home students studying in the UK. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

A total of 247 students completed an online survey at the University of Bedfordshire.

The hypothesis that international students experience higher loneliness, lower self-esteem, lower life satisfaction and poorer general mental health than home students was rejected. Home students had significantly lower self-esteem, life satisfaction and general mental health scores. Black ethnicity and home student status significantly predicted general mental health and self-esteem in regression analyses. The predictive utility of home student status was maintained when other variables were controlled for in regression models.

This research suggests that the UK universities should ensure that both home and international students are adequately supported for their mental health.

The International Initiative for Mental Health Leadership (IIMHL) and The International Journal of Leadership in Public Services are pleased to announce that an association has been recently established. The IIMHL will be using future issues of the Journal as a vehicle for the dissemination of its research and information and will be publishing an annual supplement to the Journal reporting on the IIMHL's annual leadership exchange and conference. As background to pieces for future issues, this article provides an introduction to the IIMHL.

To underscore the significance of international health care management, we focus on three themes: the problem of global blindness; global health care challenges and opportunities; and learning from international health care management. The problem of global blindness highlights how health care managers’ inattentional blindness to competitors’ operational performance and market strategies lead to avoidable and expensive failures. To address global challenges and opportunities, health care organizations are employing two different strategies: (1) building and marketing a world-class health care facility internationally, and (2) organizing and integrating multinational health care operations. The first strategy exploits the medical-tourism market. The second strategy requires either multinational health care networks or transnational health care organizations. One of the lessons to be learned from international health care management is that an organization can create a meta-national competitive advantage. Another lesson is that by examining best practices from around the world, health care organizations can obtain new insights and become more innovative within their home markets. A corollary and third lesson is that while health care organizations can learn a great deal from examining international best clinical practices, sometimes the most important management lessons are lost in clinical translations. The fourth and last lesson is that worst cases – serious international management failures – offer perhaps the most valuable insights into the role of culture, complexity, and leadership for health care organizations.

HIV/AIDS is a serious health threat for prison populations in many countries, and presents significant challenges for prison and public health authorities. This situation is often exacerbated by high rates of hepatitis and/or tuberculosis. The generally accepted principle that prisons and prisoners remain part of the broader community means that the health threat of HIV within prisons, and the health threat outside of prisons, are inextricably linked and demand coordinated action. Yet many countries have not implemented comprehensive HIV prevention programmes in prisons, or achieved a standard of prison healthcare equivalent to the standard outside of prison. In December 2004, the authors were retained by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) to prepare an international Framework to address HIV/AIDS prevention, care and treatment in prisons. The Framework is a tool designed to assist governments meet international obligations on human rights, prison conditions, and public health. It outlines a 100‐point action plan for implementing a response to HIV/AIDS in prisons based on international health and human rights standards, and on evaluated models of good practice.

Global health challenges and threats could be confronted by collaborative efforts of international community. Governance for global health is a set of formal and informal processes, operating beyond state boundaries, and refers to institutions and mechanisms established at the national, regional and international levels. Nordic countries demonstrated a long-standing commitment to development assistance for health (DAH), and more recently to governance for global health. Governance for global health tools could be used effectively to achieve collective solutions for the maintenance and promotion of health as a common good, could ensure accountability and transparency, and reconcile the interests of different actors on the international and national levels. The aim of this paper is to provide an overview of tools and approaches in support of eight sub-functions of governance for global health applied by the Nordic countries. This will help international audience to compare those mechanisms with similar mechanisms that are available or planned in their countries and regions, and may benefit policy scholars and practitioners.

This study uses qualitative review of research literature, policy documents and information available from institutional websites related to the governance of global health in four Nordic countries. In total, 50 selected publications were analyzed using framework synthesis, mapping all findings to 8 dimensions (sub-functions) of governance for global health and related tools.

Review reveals which tools are available, how they have been applied by the Nordic countries and influenced all domains (sub-functions) of governance for global health at different levels: national governments, agencies and networks; bilateral and multilateral partnerships; inter-governmental institutions and international health-related organizations. Common trends and approaches in governance for global health have been formulated.

This study is unique in relation to the prior literature as it looks at the role of Nordic countries in the governance for global health system through the lens of tools applied in support to its sub-functions.