Health Policies Require New Multidisciplinary Research

Abstract

The world trends in human life activity highlight that health is beyond a doctor, a hospital or an illness problem. Feeling healthy really impacts productivity and is also very important to fully understand human wellbeing, physical and mental personality, and consequently policies. In health policy the “diagnosis” is not always suitable and this will sometimes open incentives for wrong policy responses. According to Silva (2012), we should consider three important features relating to health policies in Portugal: sustainability and financial efficiency; equity in access and results and system quality. Taken as a whole, all the three features are connected with “cost” management. In fact, since the 1970’s in 20 Century Portugal, the National Health System was implemented as a democratic achievement guaranteeing free health access to every citizen, independent of race, socioeconomic or religious status. It was a democratic political decision after the revolutionary process within a context of economic expansion free of special financial constraints. Suddenly the health care system changed rapidly: higher salaries, a huge increase of new infrastructures and demand for health services and an exponential use of new and expensive technologies. If we link this to the new international and multinational sector of pharmacy and the changes in demographic trends, namely higher life expectancy rates and ageing society, we have the right environment where designing policies would include extremely delicate financial strategies. Furthermore, new physical and nutritional habits were induced through new technology based industries after World War II. The last 70 years brought