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Review

Fiscal Policies for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention

Rachel Nugent, Felicia Knaul
Dean T Jamison, Joel G Breman, Anthony R Measham, George Alleyne, Mariam Claeson, David B Evans, Prabhat Jha, Anne Mills, Philip Musgrove
, editors.
In: Disease Control Priorities in Developing Countries. 2nd edition. Washington (DC): The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development / The World Bank; 2006. Chapter 11.
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Review

Fiscal Policies for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention

Rachel Nugent et al.
Free Books & Documents

Excerpt

The purpose of this chapter is to review country experiences with promoting health through fiscal policies and to examine the usefulness and success of these policies. The chapter considers both the role of fiscal policies in the production of health and the effect of these policies on the well-being of the economy—fiscal policy for health and healthy fiscal policy. Little exists in the literature linking fiscal policy and health promotion except in relation to tobacco. This work contributes to filling that gap.

The chapter deals specifically with experiences at the country level with tax policies affecting some goods related to health, such as food, tobacco, alcohol, and condoms; subsidized provision of workplace promotion of healthy behavior and caregiving; and direct subsidies affecting food provision and fortification, cooking fuels, water purification and soap, condoms, bednets, vaccines, and medical research. The chapter only touches on health care provision and does not discuss its financing, either directly by governments or through insurance, because other chapters deal with those topics.

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