This book examines the important role of consumer activism in health policy in different national contexts. In an age of shifting boundaries between state and civil society, consumer groups are potentially drivers of democratisation in the health domain. The expert contributors explore how their activities bring new dynamics to relations between service providers, the medical profession, government agencies, and other policy actors. This book is unique in comprehensivelyanalysing the opportunities and dilemmas of this type of activism, including ambiguous partnerships between consumer groups and stakeholders such as the pharmaceutical industry. These themes are explored within aninternationally comparative framework, with case studies from various countries.

This book provides an account of milestone health insurance reforms that took place in Korea and Thailand, which significantly advanced equitable access and redistribution in health care. Thai and Korean welfare champions were deeply informed by their experiences as activists in their countries' democracy movements.

The process of user-centered innovation: how it can benefit both users and manufacturers and how its emergence will bring changes in business models and in public policy. Innovation is rapidly becoming democratized. Users, aided by improvements in computer and communications technology, increasingly can develop their own new products and services. These innovating users—both individuals and firms—often freely share their innovations with others, creating user-innovation communities and a rich intellectual commons. In Democratizing Innovation, Eric von Hippel looks closely at this emerging system of user-centered innovation. He explains why and when users find it profitable to develop new products and services for themselves, and why it often pays users to reveal their innovations freely for the use of all.The trend toward democratized innovation can be seen in software and information products—most notably in the free and open-source software movement—but also in physical products. Von Hippel's many examples of user innovation in action range from surgical equipment to surfboards to software security features. He shows that product and service development is concentrated among "lead users," who are ahead on marketplace trends and whose innovations are often commercially attractive. Von Hippel argues that manufacturers should redesign their innovation processes and that they should systematically seek out innovations developed by users. He points to businesses—the custom semiconductor industry is one example—that have learned to assist user-innovators by providing them with toolkits for developing new products. User innovation has a positive impact on social welfare, and von Hippel proposes that government policies, including R&D subsidies and tax credits, should be realigned to eliminate biases against it. The goal of a democratized user-centered innovation system, says von Hippel, is well worth striving for. An electronic version of this book is available under a Creative Commons license.

In the 1960s and 1970s, a wave of social movements permeated the American landscape; these pushes for change included the community health movement and the women's health movement. In considering these two health movements, I wondered if communities were better served by their new modes of healthcare delivery than they had been in the past? To explore this question more deeply, I choose two New England health centers as case sutdies for my thesis. The first clinic is a community health center in Dorchester, Massachusetts, which started in 1965. The second clinic, the New Hampshire Women's Health Services located in New Hampshire's capital, opened in 1974. I utilized oral interviews, newspaper articles, surveys conducted by non-profit organizations, and the feminist health center's quarterly publication to establish the histories of each health center. I then placed these narratives into the scholarship of each health movement. Although I initially planned on highlighting the avenues for empowerment created in these health movements, the use of a health social movements framework allowed me to underscore an even more prominent commonality between the two centers: the revived emphasis on experiential knowledge in the medical profession in the second half of the twentieth century.

Introduction; Four Case Studies of Democratic Reform; Lessons from the Four Case Studies; Linking Democratic Forms of of Governance to Progressive Health Care Reform in BC; Conclusion; ADDEND; A Proposal for Community Con ... ; Notes.

This book provides an account of milestone health insurance reforms that took place in Korea and Thailand, which significantly advanced equitable access and redistribution in health care. Thai and Korean welfare champions were deeply informed by their experiences as activists in their countries' democracy movements.

Central to this book is the idea that the United States is in the midst of a health care crisis, one that will be exacerbated as the population continues to age. Longino and Murphy trace the philosophical and technological development of the biomedical model and show its inadequacy to deal with the massive chronic disease demand of the present and the future. They argue that the delivery of health care will meet and survive the old age challenge only if the medical system is thoroughly democratized. A more inclusive system must be devised that encourages a more reasonable allocation of resources, gives more attention to prevention, adopts a wider range of non-medical interventions, and invites citizens to become more involved in their own health care and the planning of services.