{"title":"Planning primary health services from a body count?","authors":"Jean-Pierre Habicht, Peter A. Berman","doi":"10.1016/0160-7995(80)90032-5","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>We were asked to comment on two other papers in this series. One using statistical simulation techniques to identify effective health care interventions permits us to discuss some common statistical and logical mistakes which result in wrong prescriptions. These include the old chestnuts of mixing apples with pears into aggregate measures of health, and of assuming that a chain of causes is a causal chain. The other article reviews the utility of actual health care programs and touches on community and organizational factors that make or break otherwise well-designed health care interventions. We now have the silver bullets of disease prevention and cure to fell most of the werewolves of ill health in developing areas. However, we lack the rifles to fire these bullets. Another article in this series exhorts us to polish the bullets we have and make more of them. We feel the rifles are more urgent.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":76948,"journal":{"name":"Social science & medicine. Medical economics","volume":"14 2","pages":"Pages 129-136"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0000,"publicationDate":"1980-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1016/0160-7995(80)90032-5","citationCount":"12","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Social science & medicine. Medical economics","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0160799580900325","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"","JCRName":"","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 12
Abstract
We were asked to comment on two other papers in this series. One using statistical simulation techniques to identify effective health care interventions permits us to discuss some common statistical and logical mistakes which result in wrong prescriptions. These include the old chestnuts of mixing apples with pears into aggregate measures of health, and of assuming that a chain of causes is a causal chain. The other article reviews the utility of actual health care programs and touches on community and organizational factors that make or break otherwise well-designed health care interventions. We now have the silver bullets of disease prevention and cure to fell most of the werewolves of ill health in developing areas. However, we lack the rifles to fire these bullets. Another article in this series exhorts us to polish the bullets we have and make more of them. We feel the rifles are more urgent.