Shaping health policy by Exworthy, Mark; Peckham, Stephen; Powell, Martin;

Long description:

This collection examines the role that case-studies play in understanding and explaining British health policy. Overall, the chapters cover the key health policy literatures in terms of the policy process, analytical frameworks and some of the seminal moments of the NHS. They have been written by leading health policy researchers in sociology, social policy, management and organisation studies. The collection explores and promotes the case-study as an under-used method and thereby encourages a more reflective approach to policy learning by practitioners and academics. The book will appeal to under-graduates, post-graduates and academics in social policy, public management and health services research.

This collection examines the role that case-studies play in understanding and explaining British health policy. Overall, the chapters cover the key health policy literatures in terms of the policy process, analytical frameworks and some of the seminal moments of the NHS. They have been written by leading health policy researchers in sociology, social policy, management and organisation studies. The collection explores and promotes the case-study as an under-used method and thereby encourages a more reflective approach to policy learning by practitioners and academics.

Case studies have become a key method in social science, including health policy. However, they suffer inherent problems in designing and conducting research, including abuse and misuse, in theory and practice, in analysis and in application. This book invigorates the case study as a valuable technique for researchers and practitioners in British health policy and offers insights into the workings of the NHS and opportunities for the testing of theories and concepts.

The book will appeal to under-graduates, post-graduates and academics in social policy, public management and health services research. It will also be of interest to clinicians, managers and policy-makers as they seek to understand better previous and current developments in the NHS.

Table of Contents:

Section 1: Case studies in health policy: an introduction ~ Mark Exworthy and Martin Powell; Case studies of the health policy process: a methodological introduction ~ Mike Marinetto; Section 2: Creation, consolidation, disillusion (1948-1980s): NHS birthing pains ~ Martin Powell; Hospital policy in England and Wales: of what is the 1962 Hospital Plan a case? ~ John Mohan; The case study as history: 'Ideology, class and the National Health Service' by Rudolf Klein ~ Ian Greener; Hospitals in Trouble ~ Joan Higgins; Normal Accidents: learning how to learn about safety ~ Justin Keen; Repressed interests: explaining why patients and the public have little influence on health care policy: Alford's concepts of dominant, challenging and repressed interests ~ Stephen Peckham and Micky Willmott; Section 3: Safe in our hands - conflicts and challenges (1980 and 1990s): The 1983 Griffiths Inquiry ~ Fraser Macfarlane, Mark Exworthy and Micky Willmott; 'AIDS in the UK: The making of policy, 1981 - 1994' (Berridge, 1996): a case study in British health policy ~ David Evans; What the doctor ordered: the Audit Commission's case study of general practice fundholders ~ David Wainwright and Michael Calnan; 'Coping with uncertainty: Policy and politics in the National Health Service' (Hunter, 1980) ~ David Hughes; 'Shaping strategic change': changing the way organisational change was researched in the NHS ~ Louise Locock and Sue Dopson; Section 4: New Labour, new NHS? The NHS since the 1990s: Patient choice: a contemporary policy story ~ Stephen Peckham and Marie Sanderson; The individualisation of health: health surveillance, lifestyle control and public health ~ Alison Hann; NHS confidential: Implementation, or … How great expectations in Whitehall are dashed in Stoke-on-Trent ~ Calum Paton; Implementing clinical guidelines: a case study of research in context ~ George Dowswell and Stephen Harrison; Carolyn Hughes Tuohy's analysis of the English National Health Service internal market of the 1990s ~ Pauline Allen; Evidence and health inequalities: the Black, Acheson and Marmot reports ~ Mark Exworthy and Adam Oliver; Section 5: Policy learning from case studies in health policy: taking forward the debate ~ Mark Exworthy and Stephen Peckham; Case studies in health policy: concluding remarks ~ Mark Exworthy and Martin Powell.