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Decentralization has profound implications for many health systems. This study investigates the effect of health system decentralization in Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries on public health security capacity and health service satisfaction.

Multiple linear regression analyses were employed for variables related to the level of health security capacity and satisfaction with the healthcare system while controlling for all socio-demographic variables from the European Social Survey, including over 44,000 respondents from 25 OECD countries. The Health Systems in Transition series of countries were used for assessing the decentralization level.

The result of multiple linear regression analyses showed that the level of decentralization in health systems was significantly associated with higher health security capacity (ß-coefficient 3.722, 95% confidence interval (CI) [3.536 3.908]; p=<0.001) and health service satisfaction (ß-coefficient 1.463, 95% CI [1.389 1.536]; p=<0.001) in the study. Countries with a higher level of decentralization in health policy tasks and areas were significantly likely to have higher health services satisfaction, whereas this satisfaction had a significant negative relation with the lower level of decentralization status of secondary/tertiary care services in OECD countries (ß-coefficient −5.250, 95% CI [−5.757–4.743]; p = 0.001).

This study contributes to a better understanding of the extent to which decentralization of health services affects public health safety capacity and satisfaction with health services, whereas the level of decentralization in OECD countries varies considerably. Overall, the findings highlight the importance of public health security and satisfaction with health care delivery in assessing the effects of decentralization in health services.

This research paper aimed to study the legal structure of top-performing health governance systems and compare them with the Indonesian health social security system to identify the main differences and provide recommendations for Indonesian and other developing countries’ health policymakers and administrators.

Using formative research with a conceptual approach and statute approach as method in this study. Data was gathered using the document study technique, which studies various documents, especially legal documents related to health law, linked to legal purpose theories. Moreover, the World Health Organization ranking was considered to choose the two countries (France and Singapore) with a high social health security system for comparative analysis. All data collected has been analyzed using a qualitative and theoretical basis. Content analysis was performed by analyzing the legal documents, and the regulatory framework of all three countries was deeply analyzed to draw conclusions and recommendations.

Indonesia has specific laws to implement a social security system in the health sector. However, the lack of the best medical facilities and infrastructure and weak implementation of existing laws were identified as major reasons behind the poor health security system compared to comparative countries. Also, as a developing nation Indonesian Government face budgetary pressures and huge population challenges to meet required standards. Thus, the financing approaches used by Singapore and France may help developing countries meet these challenges effectively. Therefore, there is a dire need to strengthen the social health security system all over the country with amendments to laws and ensure the implementation of prevailing laws and regulations.

Providing understanding related to the social security health system in Indonesia along with a detailed description of the sound social health security system in France and Singapore will further provide an avenue for the researchers to critically analyze this line of study to devise some valuable suggestions further and to draw loopholes in the system.

A comparative approach for legal studies in the health sector is rare. So, this research advanced the social security health system-related literature and legal studies on the health sector by using this comparative approach to develop policy insights and future research directions, which will further help the field to grow.

The Rajapaksa regime over the 2005–2022 period promoted a national-popular project based on a militarised Sinhala-Buddhist nationalism promoting a market-driven rentier economy. It illustrated a form of patrimonial capitalism undermining public accountability and the efficacy of the state bureaucracy. This popular-national project was dependent on strengthening ties with China while distancing relations with India and the Global North (USA and the EU). The ways in which the external relations were coordinated reinforced discrimination against Tamil and Muslim communities, while disregarding their demands for justice and reparations. The increasing integration of the economy with financial markets, driven by the Central Bank, amplified the commercialisation of the state, restraining public revenues and state oversight. Meanwhile, the militarisation of the state involved the commercialisation of the military, opaque military budgets and violent repression of protests. The Rajapaksa regime, which enabled a minority-privileged (leisure) class to culturally flourish in regulated safe spaces, also instigated multiple protests from below demanding democracy as well as justice.

This study aims to investigate the basic public service level in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region under the impact of COVID-19.

This study constructed a basic public service-level evaluation system from the five dimensions of education, culture, health, social security and infrastructure and environment, and measures the basic public service level in 13 cities in Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei using the entropy method. The spatial pattern and dynamic evolution of the public service level are analysed from the perspective of dynamic trends in time series and spatial distribution, along with the reasons for the evolution of spatial distribution.

(1) The basic public service level in the 13 cities is generally on the rise, but the trend is unstable. (2) The basic public service level in space shows a general trend of attenuation from northeast to southwest, with significant spatial imbalance and orientation. (3) The regional differences first increase and then decrease. (4) The inter-group mobility of different basic public service levels is low, and cities with lower initial levels find it difficult to achieve leapfrog development. Moreover, the health service level of the region is still at a low stage, which is not conducive to effectively preventing and controlling the epidemic.

From the perspective of this research, the spatial pattern and dynamic evolution of basic public service were adopted to analyse the coordinated development of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region. Furthermore, this study discusses how to improve the basic public service level to ensure sustainable operation in the region under the impact of COVID-19.

General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) of the European Union (EU) was passed to protect data privacy. Though the GDPR intended to address issues related to data privacy in the EU, it created an extra-territorial effect through Articles 3, 45 and 46. Extra-territorial effect refers to the application or the effect of local laws and regulations in another country. Lawmakers around the globe passed or intensified their efforts to pass laws to have personal data privacy covered so that they meet the adequacy requirement under Articles 45–46 of GDPR while providing comprehensive legislation locally. This study aims to analyze the Malaysian and Saudi Arabian legislation on health data privacy and their adequacy in meeting GDPR data privacy protection requirements.

The research used a systematic literature review, legal content analysis and comparative analysis to critically analyze the health data protection in Malaysia and Saudi Arabia in comparison with GDPR and to see the adequacy of health data protection that could meet the requirement of EU data transfer requirement.

The finding suggested that the private sector is better regulated in Malaysia than the public sector. Saudi Arabia has some general laws to cover health data privacy in both public and private sector organizations until the newly passed data protection law is implemented in 2024. The finding also suggested that the Personal Data Protection Act 2010 of Malaysia and the Personal Data Protection Law 2022 of Saudi Arabia could be considered “adequate” under GDPR.

The research would be able to identify the key principles that could identify the adequacy of the laws about health data in Malaysia and Saudi Arabia as there is a dearth of literature in this area. This will help to propose suggestions to improve the laws concerning health data protection so that various stakeholders can benefit from it.

This study aims to analyse the nature and trends in the knowledge discovery process on COVID-19 and food insecurity using a comprehensive bibliometric analysis based on the indexing literature in the Scopus database.

Data were extracted from Scopus using the keywords COVID-19 and food security to ensure extensive coverage. A total of 840 research papers on COVID-19 and food security were analysed using VOSviewer and RStudio software.

The findings of the bibliometric analysis in terms of mapping of scientific research across countries and co-occurrence of research keywords provide the trends in research focus and future directions for food insecurity research during times of uncertainty. Based on this analysis, the focus of scientific research has been categorised as COVID-19 and food supply resilience, COVID-19 and food security, COVID-19 and public health, COVID-19 and nutrition, COVID-19 and mental health and depression, COVID-19 and migration and COVID-19 and social distancing. A thematic map was created to identify future research on COVID-19 and food security.

This analysis identifies potential research areas such as food supply and production, nutrition and health that may help set future research agendas and devise policy supports for better managing food insecurity during uncertainty.

This analysis provides epistemological underpinnings for knowledge generation and acquisition on COVID-19 and food insecurity.

Health sector corruption constitutes a pervasive challenge and a major obstacle to the equitable enjoyment of the right to health by exacerbating health inequalities within societies, while often eroding public trust primarily amid public health crises that threaten human security. The purpose of this paper is to examine the value of advancing right to health considerations in national legislative and regulatory responses against health sector corruption.

This paper builds on existing evidence, with focusing attention on international standards that are relevant to the topic under discussion. The literature research included publicly available reports, peer-reviewed studies and other documents primarily of human rights bodies at the United Nations level.

Advancing right to health considerations in national responses against health sector corruption offers comprehensive guidance for the deployment of a strong regulatory anti-corruption framework for action by the governments as part of their health rights obligations. Essentially, the implementation of such a national framework for action, encompassing accountability, participatory decision-making and transparency, constitutes a necessary and an important step towards maintaining well-functioning health systems and a robust social pressure for continued political commitment with the ultimate goal the provision of equitable access to quality health services at all times.

By using a rights-based approach, the paper identifies a national framework for state action consisting of legal obligations and tools towards guiding governments, while at the same time empowering civil society groups to demand the implementation of core human rights principles of transparency, participation and accountability within health system governance. It provides insights for the future development, reinforcement and/or reform of national law, policies and practices towards minimizing and eradicating vulnerabilities to health sector corruption.

Antibiotics shortages have become an increasingly common problem in Europe because of several reasons, including the offshoring of the production of active pharmaceutical ingredients for many of these products to low production cost countries, such as China and India. The problem has deteriorated because of the Covid-19 crisis that has put most global value chains (GVCs) under great stress. This situation has boosted extensive discussions among academics, practitioners and policymakers on possible changes to the configuration of GVCs. This paper aims to focus specifically on antibiotics supply chains from the perspective of a small country (Sweden), and analyse the pros and cons of backshoring and nearshoring alternatives, as a means to reduce drug shortages.

This work adopts a systemic perspective to capture the implications of reshoring for the different stakeholders involved in the antibiotics field. The present meso-analysis, focusing at the industry level, is based on multiple sources of primary data collected between 2014 and 2021, including participation in policy-related projects and interviews with over 100 representatives of key stakeholders in the antibiotics field.

This paper shows how reshoring can address the problems of drug shortages and reduce availability risk in antibiotics’ GVCs. However, the authors show that no simple and best solution exists because both alternatives of reshoring, i.e. backshoring and nearshoring, entail pros and cons for different stakeholders. The authors conclude with implications for policymakers and managers.

The analysis of pros and cons of both backshoring and nearshoring for various stakeholders offers relevant implications for research on operations and supply management, international business and economics/political science.

This paper looks at reshoring as a policy-driven decision and provides an innovative systemic perspective to analyse the implications for different stakeholders of two reshoring options concerning the antibiotics supply chain.

The purpose of this study is to discuss the principles and factors that influence the site selection of emergency medical facilities for public health emergencies. This paper discusses the selection of the best facilities from the available facilities, proposes the capacity of new facilities, presents a logistic regression model and establishes a site selection model for emergency medical facilities for public health emergencies in megacities.

Using Guangzhou City as the research object, seven alternative facility points and the points' capacities were preset. Nine demand points were determined, and two facility locations were selected using genetic algorithms (GAs) in MATLAB for programing simulation and operational analysis.

Comparing the results of the improved GA, the results show that the improved model has fewer evolutionary generations and a faster operation speed, and that the model outperforms the traditional P-center model. The GA provides a theoretical foundation for determining the construction location of emergency medical facilities in megacities in the event of a public health emergency.

First, in this case study, there is no scientific assessment of the establishment of the capacity of the facility point, but that is a subjective method based on the assumption of the capacity of the surrounding existing hospitals. Second, because this is a theoretical analysis, the model developed in this study does not consider the actual driving speed and driving distance, but the speed of the unified average driving distance and the driving distance to take the average of multiple distances.

The results show that the method increases the selection space of decision-makers, provides them with stable technical support, helps them quickly determine the location of emergency medical facilities to respond to disaster relief work and provides better action plans for decision makers.

The results show that the algorithm performs well, which verifies the applicability of this model. When the solution results of the improved GA are compared, the results show that the improved model has fewer evolutionary generations, faster operation speed and better model than the intermediate model GA. This model can more successfully find the optimal location decision scheme, making that more suitable for the location problem of megacities in the case of public health emergencies.

The research findings provide a theoretical and decision-making basis for the location of government emergency medical facilities, as well as guidance for enterprises constructing emergency medical facilities.