This study – Decentralisation, Participation and Equity in the English NHS – is part of the National Health Systems from a Comparative Perspective: Studies of Local, Regional and Participatory Management project under the Improving the Quality of Participatory and Strategic Management of the Brazilian SUS research, teaching and technical cooperation partnership, which has been established to construct an interrelated set of knowledge, evidence, inputs and proposals to improve the policies developed by the Brazilian Ministry of Health Secretariat for Participatory Strategic Management of the Brazilian National Health System (SUS), and to build capacity in staff of the Secretariat and Ministry of Health.
The study – one of a series of country studies – examines the SUS in comparison with the National Health Service (NHS) in England, in order to develop proposals for reform towards an effective, universal, quality health system in Brazil.
The research involves two issues, concerning theory and methodology. The first, in a macro-historical sense, concerns the adaptive processes that national health systems display in response to social, economic and demographic changes and technological innovation and how these find expression in the form of policy agendas. The other issue, in a methodological sense, involves formulating a model for comparing the process of health policy agenda formation in different kinds of countries. In taking Brazil’s policy agenda as central to the identification of processes in other countries, this study responds to its main purpose, which is to dialogue with national institutions and decision-makers.
