As part of health reforms announced in April 2009, China plans to expand and strengthen primary care (i.e., provision of first contact, person-focused, ongoing care over time, and coordinating care when people receive services from other providers). Other nations of Asia continue to grapple with how to promote population health and constrain healthcare spending. What is the evidence about the effectiveness of primary care in improving population health and making healthcare accessible and affordable?

In this talk, Dr. Starfield will speak about the robust evidence of the association between primary care and better health outcomes at lower cost; ways of measuring the effectiveness of primary care; how selected Asian countries compare in such rankings; and the broader implications of primary care research for health policy in Asia.

Dr. Starfield, a physician and health services researcher, is internationally known for her work in primary care; her books, Primary Care:  Concept, Evaluation, and Policy and Primary Care: Balancing Health Needs, Services, and Technology, are widely recognized as the seminal works in the field.  She has been instrumental in leading projects to develop important methodological tools, including the Primary Care Assessment Tool, the CHIP tools (to assess adolescent and child health status), and the Johns Hopkins Adjusted Clinical Groups (ACGs) for assessment of diagnosed morbidity burdens reflecting degrees of  co-morbidity.   She was the co-founder and first president of the International Society for Equity in Health, a scientific organization devoted to furthering knowledge about the determinants of inequity in health and ways to eliminate them.  Her work thus focuses on quality of care, health status assessment, primary care evaluation, and equity in health. She is a member of the Institute of Medicine and has been on its governing council, and has been a member ofthe National Committee on Vital and Health Statistics and many other government and professional committees and groups. She has a BA from Swarthmore College, an MD from the State University of New York, Downstate Medical Center, and an MPH from Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health.

Thailand introduced a universal coverage program in 2001. This program is commonly known as a "30 Baht Health Reform," adding coverage for nearly 14 million more people. This presentation will give an overview of the 30 Baht Health Reform including its main features and evolution, as well as a preliminary evaluation of its success. The talk will mostly be based on a paper entitled "Early Results from Thailand's 30 Baht Universal Health Reform - Something to Smile About," published in Health Affairs.

Kannika Damrongplasit is currently the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of California at Los Angeles and RAND Corporation. She received her Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Southern California. Her fields of interest are in program evaluation, applied econometrics, health economics and applied microeconomics. She has published in Journal of Business and Economic Statistics, Health Affairs, and Singapore Economic Review. In January 2010, she will assume an assistant professor position at the Department of Economics, Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.

This seminar will feature two presentations: an attempt to evaluate the impact of health policy under a decade of progressive governments in Korea; and an investigation into the health and economic well-being of the elderly in Korea. The presenters will be Dr. Byongho Tchoe, a 2008-09 visiting scholar at Stanford University, and Dr. Young Kyung Do, the inaugural postdoctoral fellow in the Asia Health Policy Program at Stanford.

Korea achieved universal health care coverage in 1989 only twelve years after the introduction of social health insurance under an authoritarian government. In 1992 a civil government won the presidential election. Consistent with a conservative ideology oriented toward market principles and globalization, that government emphasized competitive principles in health care policy. However, at the end of 1997 in the face of economic crisis, the progressive party won the Korean presidential election; their health emphasized strengthening equity, redistribution, and regulation of providers’ rent seeking behavior. Under successive progressive governments from 1998 to 2007, ambitious health policy reforms integrated insurers, separated prescribing from dispensing, reformed provider payment, expanded benefits coverage, increased medical-aid enrollees, and increased the role of government providers in the health care market. But in the election of 2007, they were defeated by a conservative party, which insists that competition among insurers and providers will enhance efficiency and quality in health care, and stresses consumer choice and responsibility.

Dr. Tchoe's talk will attempt to evaluate impact of health care policy under a decade of progressive governments in Korea. Although equity in both access to care and financial responsibility appear to be enhanced, there is controversy about whether the policies were cost-effective or improved health, and what will happen as the new government repeals regulations in the health care market. The return of economic crisis also brings renewed urgency to debates of economic and social policy.

Byongho Tchoe is a 2008-09 visiting scholar at Stanford University. After working at the Korea Development Institute from 1983 to 1995, he took up his current post with the Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs. He has been influential in formulating health and social policy in Korea, having served as an advisor to the minister of health and social welfare and participated in many task forces and committees. In 2007, he was awarded a National Medal in honor of 30 years achievement related to Korea’s National Health Insurance. He has published many articles and books and served as president of the Korean Association of Health Economics and Policy and as vice president of the Korea Association of Social Security. He holds a master’s degree in public policy from Seoul National University and a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Georgia.

Young Kyung Do is the inaugural Postdoctoral Fellow in Asia Health Policy Program at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center. He completed his Ph.D. in health policy and administration at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Public Health in August 2008. He has also earned M.D. and Master of Public Health degrees from Seoul National University (in 1997 and 2003, respectively). He earned board certification in preventive medicine from the Korean Medical Association in 2004. He received the First Prize Award in the Graduate Student Paper Competition in the Korea Labor and Income Panel Study Conference in 2007. He also is the recipient of the Harry T. Phillips Award for Outstanding Teaching by a Doctoral Student from the UNC Department of Health Policy and Administration in 2007. In May 2008, he was selected as a New Investigator in Global Health by the Global Health Council.