Managerial Epidemiology & Public Health: A Bridge from Epidemiology to Health Services Management

نویسندگان: علی جنتی , همایون صادقی بازرگانی

کلمات کلیدی: Epidemiology, as a science, probes into distribution and determinants of any kind of disease in human populations. There are various areas where epidemiologic tools may be employed. First, they could be used to measure burden of diseases in a specific population. Second, these tools could determine differences in burden of diseases among populations. Third, they are applied to delve into the origins or causes of such differences in disease burdens. Last but not least, epidemiologic tools could be employed to determine the ramifications of different treatments and interventions given to lessen burden of diseases. To put it simply, epidemiology encompasses any kind of tool that is applied to determine anything learnt about interventions, treatments, and healthcare services [1]. There are a variety of ways through which health services management may be outlined. One of the prevailing ways is to provide a list of functions that managers perform. Then, these functions should be defined one by one. After the descriptions are provided, they should be elaborated on. Last, the connections among them are formed. According to Rakich, Longest, and Darr (1992) the list of these functions include planning, staffing, organizing, directing, and controlling. Health services mangers are expected to make decisions based on these functions. For instance, planning function helps them decide which services they should and which ones they should not provide. Through staffing function, managers determine the skills that are required to supply any specified service. In addition, this function aids them to decide on the qualifications and number of staff needed to provide these services. As one of the important functions, organizing function is applied by managers to establish a decent relation among various parts of organization so as to maximize positive impact on health outcomes. Next is directing function which provides managers with a vision and leadership in order to center organization on important goals. Controlling function plays a role through guiding managers to conclude if their way of organizing has led to desired outcomes. Obviously, each of these managerial functions requires decision making and a decision made in one functional domain will inevitably have some ramifications in other functional areas [1, 2]. Managerial epidemiology employs principles and tools of epidemiology so as to provide managers with a chance of making better –informed decisions in any of these domains. In other words, managerial epidemiology has to do with application of principles and tools of epidemiology in decision making processes [1]. As a matter of fact, managerial epidemiology can be considered to have emerged as a result of contemporary demands of epidemiology; hence, it has become the most considerable discipline for planning and managing health care for populations. To provide a functional definition of managerial epidemiology, it can be said that it is to study distribution and determinants of health and diseases which include injuries and accidents in specific populations and then applying this study to promotion of health, preventions, control of diseases, design of health care services to meet population needs, and elaboration of health policy [3]. A variety of external forces have contributed to transformation of epidemiology to a managerial focus. Transition from a traditional role of health care executive to a population-oriented one can be claimed to be one of the main set of forces. Traditional role of health care executive was in facility context and included some general management functions such as planning, organization, leadership, and control. As it can be seen, all of these functions address management of facilities and staff that are employed to provide health care services [3]. However, health care management discipline incessantly evolves from individual patient perspective into a managed population one. Currently, this evolution is accentuated by managing a network of services, management across traditional organizational boundaries, and management of ceaseless improvement of quality of care. The main evolutionary concerns of managerial epidemiology discipline are cost entailment and an inherent desire to uphold and enhance health care quality. And, Epidemiology has evolved as a major discipline in attaining population-oriented objectives of health care management [3]. While several journals are currently being published in the field of health services management and some in the field of epidemiology, there seems to be no journal which employs epidemiological tools and exclusively focuses on health services management. Although most journals address scholars, there is a dearth of journals which are scholarly in their depth but address reflective practitioners as well as other concerned persons. Managerial Epidemiology and Public Health (MEPH) intends to fill this gap. MEPH is an international, multidisciplinary peer-reviewed journal published in English with a wide scope while having particular focus on managerial epidemiology. It encourages submission of papers on all aspects of public health, health services management and epidemiology

نشریه: 0 , 1 , 1 , 2016