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Does More Public Health Spending Buy Better Health?

BACKGROUND: In this article, we attempt to address a persistent question in the health policy literature: Does more public health spending buy better health? This is a difficult question to answer due to unobserved differences in public health across regions as well as the potential for an endogenou...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Marton, James, Sung, Jaesang, Honore, Peggy
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: SAGE Publications 2015
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5287442/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28462255
http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/2333392815580750
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author Marton, James
Sung, Jaesang
Honore, Peggy
author_facet Marton, James
Sung, Jaesang
Honore, Peggy
author_sort Marton, James
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: In this article, we attempt to address a persistent question in the health policy literature: Does more public health spending buy better health? This is a difficult question to answer due to unobserved differences in public health across regions as well as the potential for an endogenous relationship between public health spending and public health outcomes. METHODS: We take advantage of the unique way in which public health is funded in Georgia to avoid this endogeneity problem, using a twelve year panel dataset of Georgia county public health expenditures and outcomes in order to address the “unobservables” problem. RESULTS: We find that increases in public health spending lead to increases in mortality by several different causes, including early deaths and heart disease deaths. We also find that increases in such spending leads to increases in morbidity from heart disease. CONCLUSIONS: Our results suggest that more public health funding may not always lead to improvements in health outcomes at the county level.
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spelling pubmed-52874422017-05-01 Does More Public Health Spending Buy Better Health? Marton, James Sung, Jaesang Honore, Peggy Health Serv Res Manag Epidemiol Original Research BACKGROUND: In this article, we attempt to address a persistent question in the health policy literature: Does more public health spending buy better health? This is a difficult question to answer due to unobserved differences in public health across regions as well as the potential for an endogenous relationship between public health spending and public health outcomes. METHODS: We take advantage of the unique way in which public health is funded in Georgia to avoid this endogeneity problem, using a twelve year panel dataset of Georgia county public health expenditures and outcomes in order to address the “unobservables” problem. RESULTS: We find that increases in public health spending lead to increases in mortality by several different causes, including early deaths and heart disease deaths. We also find that increases in such spending leads to increases in morbidity from heart disease. CONCLUSIONS: Our results suggest that more public health funding may not always lead to improvements in health outcomes at the county level. SAGE Publications 2015-04-13 /pmc/articles/PMC5287442/ /pubmed/28462255 http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/2333392815580750 Text en © The Author(s) 2015 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/ This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 License (http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access page(http://www.uk.sagepub.com/aboutus/openaccess.htm).
spellingShingle Original Research
Marton, James
Sung, Jaesang
Honore, Peggy
Does More Public Health Spending Buy Better Health?
title Does More Public Health Spending Buy Better Health?
title_full Does More Public Health Spending Buy Better Health?
title_fullStr Does More Public Health Spending Buy Better Health?
title_full_unstemmed Does More Public Health Spending Buy Better Health?
title_short Does More Public Health Spending Buy Better Health?
title_sort does more public health spending buy better health?
topic Original Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5287442/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28462255
http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/2333392815580750
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